MLR Draft Preview: Get to Know Charlie Walsh, Potential Seawolves Target
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Charlie Walsh carries the ball during a University of California game against Navy on February 22, 2025. Credit: Charlie Walsh/Instagram. [/caption]
He may be just out of college, but his rugby career already shows a whole lot of promise—and a whole lot of leadership—that make him a good option for a whole lot of sides in Major League Rugby.
Charlie Walsh, a tighthead prop, had an interesting journey to professional rugby. He was born in Hong Kong to American parents and grew an interest in rugby from a young age. Rugby has a long history in Hong Kong, which hosts one of the biggest stops in the international Rugby Sevens tournament, the HSBC Sevens.
According to Walsh, he was about eight or nine when he began to play rugby in his hometown, first starting off on the wing before moving to a much better suited position in the front row.
“I played across the front row in my youth, whether that was tighthead, loosehead, or hooker,” Walsh said. “I kind of settled into tighthead prop and I’ve been enjoying it ever since.”
The sport first took him across an ocean when he was in his early teens, with Walsh going to St Paul’s Collegiate School in Hamilton, New Zealand around the age of 15. St Paul’s, a boarding school in one of the most successful rugby nations, was something that grew his game considerably.
“I matured a lot as a player from being a young teenager to playing first XV in New Zealand and playing with guys who have gone on to represent New Zealand in the Olympics with the Sevens team and play professionally for a couple of New Zealand Super Rugby franchises,” Walsh said. “Being around that caliber of player, even when they were at a young age, was huge.”
And just a few years later, the sport took him to another corner of the Pacific. His elder brother Sam (now on the Chicago Hounds) was already playing for Cal Berkeley as a flyhalf, so playing for the Golden Bears was the prime choice. The Cal Golden Bears are the most successful collegiate rugby team in history, with the 15s team totaling 29 National Championships. For Walsh, who had already been looking at a professional future, it was an environment that gave him a keen understanding of what could be ahead.
“You hear stories, you know? Even before the MLR, there were guys going to World Cups when they were in their sophomore or junior year with Cal, there’s guys who played overseas for close to 10 years before there was professional rugby in the States,” Walsh said. “There was always that knowledge of ‘look, this is a place where people can grow to aspire to become professional rugby players.”
When Walsh joined the program in 2020, he immediately noticed the goal of winning that permeated the organization. When a team has more than two dozen titles, there comes an expectation to gain another one.
“Joining a program like Cal Rugby, there’s always that aspirational culture in the team,” Walsh said. “We always shoot for the top of the podium every year, it’s never a question.”
Walsh became recognized as an integral part of that culture in 2024, his fourth season wearing the gold and blue hoops. After watching Walsh’s growth as a leader, they talked with him and let him know that he was now the team’s captain.
“You not only have to know your own role inside and out, but you’ve got to know everyone else’s role to a certain degree,” Walsh noted. “As a captain, people are looking to you for leadership, for advice, for guidance.”
And as a fifth-year captain, Walsh was the lynchpin of the 2025 Golden Bears, who went 9-1 in the regular season and then romped to the championship, scoring over 70 points in each of their first two playoff matches, comfortably winning the semifinal, and then triumphing 55-38 over Life University in the final.
“It’s a goal every top aspiring team in collegiate rugby has,” Walsh said. “It was the perfect ending to a collegiate rugby career.”
As the captain, Walsh obviously played a key role in marshalling his teammates to victory, but as a tighthead prop, Walsh also showed tremendous skill. He has a strong presence in the scrum, able to hold his own under pressure quite well. The following video shows two clips from the Golden Bears’ 49-24 victory over University of British Columbia on February 16, 2025.
In the first clip, Walsh fights back a strong push to keep the scrum intact on British Columbia’s feed, while in the second, you can see his side of the scrum hold strong even while the other side begins to break down - and Walsh holds it steady long enough for his side to get the ball out.
Walsh also has a strong ability in open play, both to push through tacklers to gain meters after contact and join in as a powerhouse pusher on the driving maul. The following video shows four clips that display different aspects of his game. In the first clip, Walsh picks the ball out of a ruck and breaks multiple tacklers, showing his ability in contact. The second shows him helping to power a maul forward, while the third contains two defensive plays in succession: a tackle at the goal line and a quick reaction to hold up the ball and prevent a try. In the fourth clip, Walsh strips the ball from an opposing player and creates a try-scoring opportunity for his teammates.
Additionally, his captaincy and leadership show in his playing style, where he is calm and collected yet incredibly explosive when he needs to be. All of these things make him - in my view - an excellent candidate for the Seawolves, who could very well be looking for an upgrade at tighthead. And standing at 5-11 and 260 pounds, he already has a size comparable to a good amount of strong MLR props.
And there’s another good fit between Seattle and Charlie Walsh - that of the winning culture. Seattle, being the team to win the first two MLR titles, is always hunting the MLR Shield. That winning mindset is something that would be familiar to Walsh, coming from the pinnacle of collegiate rugby success.
“From my time at Cal, culture has always been really strong within the playing group, within the coaches, within the staff, and that’s a really important part of the foundation for success,” Walsh remarked. “If playing rugby is about playing with your best friends, going to war with your best friends, playing a sport you love with a tight group of guys … that’s definitely what I look for in teams that I hope to be a part of.”
But a strong, explosive, and skilled tighthead prop with leadership abilities is something that most every team in the MLR would like to have on their roster. For an example, take Utah, whose internationally capped tighthead Tonga Kofe signed a contract in the English Premiership—and they’re hardly the only side that has wants and needs at that edge of the front row. Accordingly, Walsh was listed early on as a top draft prospect by the MLR itself, pictured alongside four other prospects in an Instagram post on August 6.
Wherever Walsh ends up, though, it will be in a league that has faced some hardships as of late—but Walsh himself offered a reminder that these tribulations are not unique among new leagues.
“I think you have to kind of acknowledge that like the MLR is a young professional competition in America,” “Every big league, whether it's the NFL, MLS, you know, teams have come and teams have gone, especially in the early years of every competition. And although it's a challenging time in the MLR, it's definitely not foreign territory for American professional sports.”
The decision day is coming up quickly, as the draft is on Thursday, August 21, at 3 PM Pacific. Charlie Walsh’s rugby journey has taken him from Hong Kong to New Zealand to the Bay Area; it is on Thursday afternoon when we find out where he goes next.
