Seawolves Season Review: Exciting Promise, But Unmaterialized Results
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The National Anthem is performed before the Seawolves’ home opener against the Free Jacks on March 8, 2025. Although Seattle won that game, New England would go on to win the MLR Final against the SaberCats. Credit: Punkus Arnett/Seattle Seawolves. [/caption]
The 2025 Major League Rugby season ended with the New England Free Jacks securing the first three-peat in top-level North American sports since the Los Angeles Lakers in 2002. Now that the season is all over, it’s time to go over the Seattle Seawolves’ performance.
On June 14, Seattle’s late comeback came up barely short on the road against the Utah Warriors, and this year’s up-and-down rollercoaster came to an end.
After the end of the 2024 season – where Seattle lost in the MLR Final to the New England Free Jacks, who will be seeking a three-peat on Saturday in Rhode Island – the team had some pretty significant turnover. 20 players left the Seawolves:
–Koby Baker, Prop (Signed with MLR’s Chicago Hounds)
–Kellen Gordon, Prop (Retired)
–Olive Kilifi, Prop (Retired?)
–Sam Matenga, Prop (Signed with NPC’s Tasman Mako)
–Peter Malcolm, Hooker (Retired)
–DaQuan Perry, Hooker (Not re-signed)
–Joe Taufete’e, Hooker (Signed with MLR’s NOLA Gold)
–Jackson Zabierek, Hooker (Signed with Chicago Hounds)
–Jean Droste, Lock (Not re-signed)
–Mahonri Ngakuru, Lock (Signed with Top 14’s Montpelier Hérault)
–Reid Davis, Lock/Flanker (Traded to MLR’s Utah Warriors for 2025 Salary Cap Considerations)
–Andrew Durutalo, Flanker (Not re-signed)
–Kara Pryor, Flanker/Eightman (Not re-signed)
–Monate Akuei, Flanker/Eightman (Not re-signed)
–Ryan Rees, Scrumhalf (Not re-signed)
–Mack Mason, Flyhalf (Not re-signed)
–Sam Windsor, Flyhalf (Retired?)
–Tevita Kuridrani, Center (Not re-signed)
–Tavite Lopeti, Center (Signed with MLR’s San Diego Legion)
–Conner Mooneyham, Wing (Traded to MLR’s Anthem Rugby Carolina for 2025 International Roster Spot)
Some of the key players of the 2024 squad were among those leaving: Taufete’e, a heavy-hitting, 266-pound hooker, scored eight tries in 2024, while Mason was second in the MLR in points with 172. Mooneyham, Taufete’e, Malcolm, Kilifi, Rees, and Lopeti had all seen caps with the USA Eagles.
The team brought on thirteen new players by the beginning of the 2025 season:
–Njabulo Gumede, Prop (Signed, previously on Currie Cup’s Griquas)
–JP Zeiss, Prop (Traded from MLR’s Old Glory DC for 2025 Salary Cap Considerations)
–Dewald Kotze, Hooker (Drafted in Dallas Jackals Dispersal Draft)
–Kerron van Vuuren, Hooker (Signed, previously on Currie Cup’s Sharks)
–CC Mahoni, Lock (Signed, previously on MLR’s Houston SaberCats)
–Malembe Mpofu, Lock (Signed, previously on Currie Cup’s Pumas)
–OJ Noa, Lock/Flanker/Eightman (Signed, previously on MLR’s NOLA Gold)
–Brock Gallagher, Scrumhalf (Drafted in Dallas Jackals Dispersal Draft)
–Rodney Iona, Flyhalf/Center (Signed, previously on MLR’s NOLA Gold)
–Eddie Fouché, Flyhalf/Center (Signed, previously on Currie Cup’s Griquas)
–Calvin Liulamaga, Center (Drafted in first round of the 2024 MLR Draft)
–Mika Kruse, Center/Wing (Signed, previously on MLR’s Utah Warriors)
–Malacchi Esdale, Wing (Signed, previously on USA Men’s Sevens)
Compounding the player turnover was the fact that the Seawolves had a very short preseason consisting of just one game against the Seattle Rugby Club, while other sides in the MLR had preseason matches against each other. According to Seawolves head coach Allen Clarke, this was the biggest reason for the slow start.
“It was more the lack of quality preseason games that resulted in us being under-prepared for the comp,” Clarke said.
Key Players Return for Second Half Surge
The big story of Seattle’s season was the late-season hot streak. Although the Seawolves started 2-5-0 before their mid-season bye week, they managed to go on a tear and eke into the playoffs with a resounding victory over Miami in the final regular season game. Clarke attributed the turnaround to the team’s belief in themselves and support from both ownership and spectators.
From a player’s perspective, however, it was a lot of close games going the wrong way earlier in the year. Longtime Seawolf eightman and team captain Riekert Hattingh saw it as the team being unfortunate, rather than truly starting off cold.
“Some of our preseason games were canceled, which was out of our control,” Hattingh said. “With a lot of new players, many calls going against us in the first half of the season, and losing games by thin margins, we struggled to gain momentum.”
Including the Semifinal, the Seawolves played 17 games, 11 of which were decided by seven points or less. Of those close games, Seattle was 1-3 before the bye week, but 4-1-1 after it.
The season journey was personal for Hattingh, who suffered an Achilles injury during the 2024 season. Not only did he miss the rest of 2024, but he was also out for the first two games of 2025. According to Hattingh, his playability during the season was heavily in doubt at points.
“A few doctors didn’t even believe it would be possible, especially after I had to undergo a second operation on my Achilles due to complications,” Hattingh stated.
And the difficulties continued into the season for Hattingh, whose play this year was hindered by lingering pain and even tendinitis in his other Achilles. Later in the season, the eightman role began to be OJ Noa’s domain, with Hattingh slotted in at flanker.
But still, Hattingh’s return was a massive boon to the team. Center Dan Kriel and flanker Charles Elton also started their 2025 campaigns after the beginning of the year, with Elton playing every game from March 29 on and Kriel notching twelve starts on the season. Elton picked up right where he left off, finishing the year with 206 tackles in 932 minutes over 12 appearances. Kriel had a slight down year, but was still a big hitter on the back line.
Not only did the Seawolves come back during the second half of the season, but most of their wins were also second half comebacks. This was especially true during the late surge, when Seattle won three straight games against Western rivals with go-ahead tries in the last ten minutes.
Cohesion and Confidence
The big thing that improved over the course of the season was the team’s coordination and confidence in their ability. In early matches, it was a lot of the basics that eluded the Seawolves: rucks were either too crowded or not crowded enough, while passes often flew behind the intended recipient or simply got intercepted.
But the team started to improve later on in the season. The rucks became far cleaner after Hattingh’s return, with the team finding the sweet spot between too many players and not enough. Malembe Mpofu, the team’s new 6-6, 258-pound lock, really got going by the second half of the season, starting five out of the final six games (with 10 starts on the season) and getting three tries on pick-and-run play along the try line.
The improved passing was very apparent in the connection between the outside backs: fullback Duncan Matthews (1162 meters, six tries, and eleven try assists) and outside center Divan Rossouw (985 meters, eight tries, and three try assists) both put together impressive campaigns, while Futi and Pulu became the mainstays on the wings. Malacchi Esdale was slotted in as an impact wing with an ability to rush into the try zone at a moment’s notice. All of these players had a strong cohesion with one another.
“After a few games playing together, we started finding our rhythm as a team and decided to take it one game at a time,” Hattingh stated “We began building momentum and putting ourselves in the position we believed we needed to be in.”
The good thing about confidence is that it breeds itself. Once the players got into that rhythm, more difficult plays became easier and nagging issues became less prominent.
“It takes time for new combinations to align. However, we also had the belief we were good enough to beat any team in the comp,” Clarke said. “Our ability to deliver in clutch moments was special.”
Seawall Defense Remains Team Bedrock
The rock-solid base of this team is still the defense. The Seawolves showed the ability to reliably generate stops against most of their opponents within the 22 meter line. This is another area where the team’s cohesion and confidence shone through, with sometimes two or three minute defensive phases where the Seawolves battled cleanly and outlasted the attacker long enough to induce a knock-on or penalty.
There were some games early in the season – especially March 22 against the Warriors – where the team seemed to have a blind spot for breakaways. But once Elton returned and the winger team of Futi and Toni Pulu began to see more minutes, that hole was quickly plugged. Another flanker, Devin Short, in his second year with Seattle, became a key impact player during the second half of the season, playing 702 minutes in 17 games and led the team in turnovers won with 11.
The Seawolf defense gave up a little over 26 points per game during 2025, fourth-best in MLR behind the Free Jacks, the Chicago Hounds, and the Houston SaberCats. And the old saying about defense and championships was once again proven true this year: the best defensive team in the East fought the best defensive team in the West this season, with the better defensive team overall – New England – winning the whole thing.
Nic Boyer Emerges as Key Signing
During Seattle’s 46-46 tie against Rugby Football Club Los Angeles on May 2, both starting scrumhalf JP Smith and backup scrumhalf Brock Gallagher sustained injuries. This left the team without any primary scrumhalf, though utility back Eddie Fouché has experience in the position.
Before the following match on the road against Utah, the Seawolves signed Nic Boyer – a veteran MLR player with experience on three different teams going back to the league’s inception in 2018 – as an emergency scrumhalf. Despite the signing being needed in that week due to the injuries, Clarke said he had been interested in Boyer for some time.
“I'd been considering bringing in another scrum half for a number of weeks, and with the deadline day approaching I signed Nic,” Clarke stated. “His impact was immediate in the quality of his performance over Utah away.”
Boyer played all eighty minutes in his first match and was easily the man of the match. He expertly utilized controlled chaos to his advantage, keeping Utah on their back foot during the team’s second half comeback whenever Seattle had the ball. Boyer is often more scrappy and chaotic than Smith, often charging into the pile and trying to work a few more meters out of it, and the Warriors were unprepared for that kind of play.
After JP Smith’s return, the team adopted a strategy where Smith would use his calmer, precision-based style of wearing opponents down during his sixty minutes or so of playing time before Boyer would come on and speed the game up in the final quarter.
Kicking Troubles
One of the team’s most persistent issues throughout the year was kicking off the tee. It was a new issue for Seattle, as the team had previously been blessed with extremely accurate kicking flyhalves such as AJ Alatimu and Mack Mason.
But this year, the team’s two goal kickers – Rodney Iona and Eddie Fouché – had trouble from the tee. Seattle made just 63.3% of all their combined conversion or penalty goal opportunities (48 for 77), the worst percentage in MLR.
Iona’s difficulties had an extra layer of frustration to it because Iona had a precise boot in open play, with several impressive try assists coming off clutch chip kicks for teammates. While Iona made over 70% of his conversions, his biggest struggle was on penalty goals. For a team with a history of some prolific penalty goal scoring seasons – Mack Mason’s 32 penalty goals in 2024 is an MLR record, while AJ Alatimu’s 30 in 2022 and Brock Staller’s 29 in 2019 round out the top three all-time – this was a big thing to adjust to.
But there were still some clutch kicks from the boot for Seattle in 2025. An underrated one is probably Fouché’s final kick on the June 1 game on the road against the Free Jacks. If he had not made the kick, Seattle would not have gotten the close loss bonus point and would have lost their playoff spot to San Diego on the tiebreaker at the end of the season.
Disappointing Loss Ends Season
The 2025 year ended on a down note for the Seawolves, as the team lost 23-21 in the Western Conference Semifinal against the Utah Warriors. The team had gone down 17-0 in the first half – but went into the second half with the drive to try to pull off one more comeback.
“I guess the fortunate thing about the position we found ourselves in a few times this year is that it was a familiar place for us. We were in that same situation against them just weeks before,” Hattingh stated. “So to be honest, there was no panic or disbelief. We talked about the things that needed to change, and went back out there trying to execute on it.”
According to Clarke, the team went into the sheds knowing what they had to do and confident in their ability to do it.
“At halftime we recognised they had scored all of their points from our mistakes. (In fact 7 of their points should have been ruled out for a knock-on, which was confirmed 2 days later following a review with the head of referees),” Clarke stated. “The key message was to impose ourselves on them by playing in the right areas of the field and taking our chances. If we scored first we'd put doubt in their heads, because in the regular season games we'd come from behind twice.”
And the comeback started coming together in the second half. A penalty try was awarded in the 46th minute to Seattle after a foul and yellow card on Utah fullback Jordan Trainor and then Ina Futi put the team on his back with a brace. Meanwhile, the Warriors were held to just two penalty goals during their spells of offense, so it was 23-21 as Seattle got the ball back with five minutes remaining.
Then the Warriors got penalized a little past the 22 meter line a few meters out from the left touchline. There was now a decision to make: either have Iona go for a penalty kick from a difficult location, risking a miss or Utah getting the ball back and returning the favor, or go for the try.
Seattle opted to go for the try. The kick to touch was perfect and the team set up for the lineout. But the throw fell crooked, the ball went back to Utah for a scrum, and the clock wound down on two scrum resets, and the Warriors won a scrum penalty and took a quick restart into a kick to touch to win the game.
Hattingh offered this decision as an example of a tough call that he stands by, even if the end result wasn’t what he was looking for.
“I’m very content and confident in the decisions I made [throughout the season]” Hattingh stated. “You make decisions based on specific situations and probabilities, neither is a given. The final moments of our last game, as well as the Chicago final, are perfect examples of that.”
Given that there were still several minutes on the clock and it would have been a shot barely out from the touchline, it was probably the correct call. But the cards came down on the Warriors’ side in the end, and that was all she wrote for the 2025 Seawolves season.
Moving Forward
The Seattle Seawolves will be looking for a return to championship glory in 2026. The league now has a new big dog in town, with the New England Free Jacks winning MLR Shields in 2023, 2024, and 2025.
The Seawolves, the original winners of the MLR shield, were on the wrong side of a tough loss in the first round. The team’s history gives the players a sense of purpose that they should be in competition for the Shield each year, but that didn’t end up materializing this season.
“I think it’s pretty obvious that everyone was deeply disappointed, you’re always going to feel that way when you don’t reach your potential,” Hattingh noted. “At the Seawolves, we believe we should always be playing in the final.”
But there were very clearly some bright spots, and the team was able to keep pace with a lot of good sides. An important off-season is coming up, but there is a wealth of opportunity for the Seattle Seawolves.
“I’m really optimistic about the upcoming season. We have a strong foundation with a committed core group of players who know what it takes to compete at a high level,” Hattingh stated. “With the right additions and cover in key positions, along with a solid preseason, I believe we’ll be in a great position to contend, and God willing, bring the Shield back to Seattle.”
