Major Change Incoming

Big news came out of the USA today as Major League Rugby announced the format for the 2020 season, with new teams and a brand new format.

Season 3 of the USA’s professional league sees the total number of teams in the competition increased to 12, with 3 new expansion teams: the New England Free Jacks (Boston), Old Glory DC (Washington D.C.) and Rugby ATL (Atlanta).

The expansion has lead to a change in format, as the league splits into 2 conferences. The Western Conference will be home to Austin Elite Rugby, Houston Sabercats, Glendale Raptors, San Diego Legion, Seattle Seawolves and Utah Warriors. The Eastern Conference comprises the 3 new franchises along with NOLA Gold, Rugby United New York and Toronto Arrows.

Starting in mid-February, each team will play home and away against the other 5 teams in their conference and 6 games against teams in the other conference (3 home, 3 away). Once the regular season is over, the top 3 teams from each conference will enter the playoffs, where (like in the Pro14) 2ⁿᵈ and 3ʳᵈ will play each other with the winner taking on 1ˢᵗ to be declared the Conference Champion. June 28ᵗʰ will see the Conference Champions face off in the MLR Final.

First off, I’m really happy and excited to see the league continuing to grow and bring in more expansion teams. I really hope that rugby takes off in the USA and becomes its next big sport, so to see the MLR go from strength to strength after the way PRO Rugby fell apart is great to see. It’s also great to see the spread of the franchises over the country (and also spreading into Canada).

I’m not the biggest fan of a conference format but in the circumstance of such a new league that is still expanding and finding its feet, I think that this is a smart idea as it makes it easy to add new expansion teams without dramatically altering the league. I do however have some gripes with the timing of the competition as a February start means that some teams will still be struggling with cold weather for the first half of the season, while teams will also be losing players to their international teams during the Americas Rugby Championship.

Though I do have some issues, I am largely positive about how things are going in the league. The quality of rugby appears to be improving from what I have seen and having players of the calibre of Ben Foden out there will only be helping the league and USA rugby in general. With the next season starting after the World Cup, I will be interested to see if any players retire from international rugby and move over to give the MLR a go, which could push the league forward to the next level.

Suffice to say, I will be watching on with great interest.