> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://www.emeraldcityspectrum.com/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # Seawolves Break Century Mark Hosting Hartford Harpooners in Preseason - URL: https://www.emeraldcityspectrum.com/seattle-seawolves-reach-century-mark-hartford-harpooners/ - Published: 2026-03-29T07:36:50.000Z - Updated: 2026-10-08T06:15:24.000Z - Author: Callaghan Bluechel - Tags: News, Analysis, Seawolves, Paddy Ryan, Divan Rossouw, André Warner, Mark Bennett, Sean McNulty, Dorian Jones, Davy Coetzer, Nick Boyer, Rhyno Herbst, Calvin Liulamaga, Ina Futi, Dewald Donald, Robbie Abel, Stephen Brett, Dan Kriel \[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="4032"\] ![ Starfire Stadium on the afternoon of March 28, 2026, before the Seattle Seawolves took on the Hartford Harpooners in Seattle’s final preseason match before the 2026 season. Credit: Callaghan Bluechel/Emerald City Spectrum. ](https://storage.ghost.io/c/1d/f2/1df2f77b-83dd-4bc0-a6d2-6d1bb5df89a3/content/images/2026/10/3-28-26-seawolves-format-original.png) Starfire Stadium on the afternoon of March 28, 2026, before the Seattle Seawolves took on the Hartford Harpooners in Seattle’s final preseason match before the 2026 season. Credit: Callaghan Bluechel/Emerald City Spectrum. \[/caption\] TUKWILA, Wash. - Before Major League Rugby, post-collegiate American rugby was a patchwork game. It still is, at least beyond the six teams that now make up the top echelon of the sport. The Seattle Seawolves played host to a part of that patchwork on Saturday afternoon. The Hartford Harpooners, an amateur team from the other side of the country, flew over to Seattle for a preseason match as the Seawolves gear up for the 10-game regular season. This wasn't the Seawolves' first rodeo either of the preseason - they played the Stormers' second team in Cape Town on Sunday - or with the Harpooners, who they previously hosted in 2022\. Back then, with a more diffuse talent pool in the MLR, the Seawolves came out ahead 50-0 over their amateur opponents. Perhaps in a display of MLR’s talent jump since, Seattle won 111-3\. Or maybe, as I’ll explain, it might have been 113-3. Seattle and the Harpooners have interacted in other ways over the years. Five Hartford ruckers - Tommy Hunkin Clarke, Reid Watkins, Monate Akuei, Jeremiah Sio, and Daquan Perry - have gone on to rep the Seawolves colors in MLR, with 27 Seawolves caps, nine tries, 679 meters, and 175 tackles between them per the North American Rugby Database (NARDb). Hartford's starting flyhalf on Saturday, Rhys Jones, was rostered with the Seawolves for two seasons (though he only played in one match), while Sio entered the game as a reserve. The biggest link between the Harpooners and Seawolves, however, is Harford coach and the first honored Seawolves Legend Kellen Gordon. Playing at prop, Gordon racked up 47 caps, two tries, 337 meters, and 192 tackles from the Seawolves' inaugural season through 2024, per NARDb. His two best years in Seattle were his first two, where he played in every game on Seattle's way to winning the first two MLR Shields. Gordon's coaching partner, Marcus Satavu, told the pregame crowd that the fixture was an opportunity for their players to showcase their rugby skills, both their young players looking to go to the next level and their veterans keeping up with their old level of play. “One of the things we like to say in our part of our organization is you either express yourself or expose yourselves. To give these guys a real good look at if they have the opportunity to come out here and perform and stick with some of the big guys out here, it's absolutely incredible,” Satavu said. “You know, it's in our name 'Harpooners': we're out here to go hunting for whales.” The game itself, however, showed a deep mismatch between the visiting amateurs and the hosting professionals. The American club rugby patchwork is incredibly competitive, but for professional teams, they serve more as a talent funnel than an alternate peak. Hartford, as can be seen from their players who went on to Starfire or numerous other MLR pitches, is one of these high-talent club teams. But the *level* of that mismatch? Unlike the Seawolves’ 50-0 previous showing against the Harpooners or their 70-0 defeat of the Seattle Rugby Club before the 2025 season, Saturday’s game was a bigger blowout than even France-Namibia 2023, a game that ended 96-0 in favor of Les Bleus. Seattle scored 111 points - at least officially, it might have been 113 due to a scoreboard bug - while Hartford put up three. Of course, like the Seawolves’ contest against the Stormers six days prior, there is much to be learned by the outmatched. The MLR and other professional competitions are the goal for many of the Harpooners, so going up against an MLR side themselves is a rare opportunity. When a Harpooner made a reverberating tackle or stiff-armed a Seawolf to break a gainline, it said a lot more about the potential of that Harpooner than the times the same player would get brought down or stiff-armed himself. In that way, it was a lot like chasing whales: a lot of all-encompassing ocean broken by the occasional catch in the form of a play that said *this guy has something*. ### Analyzing a preseason match between a pro side and an amateur one is not all about scores and tries. As might be expected, Seattle was quick on the ball out of the gate, but a knock-on by Rhyno Herbst turned a crossed gainline into the visitors' first scrum. Seattle proceeded to completely overpower their opponent, stealing the second minute scrum away well beyond the 22 meter line. Eightman Riekert Hattingh charged forward and offloaded to openside flanker Paddy Ryan, who touched down the first Seawolves try of the match. It was an easy conversion for Davy Coetzer. Tighthead Ignacio Péculo gave a sixth minute offload to outside center Divan Rossouw, who broke the line almost all the way to the try zone before giving it to the try-scoring André Warner. Two more line breaks before the 10th minute were followed by tries from Divan Rossouw and Coetzer and was quickly 28-0 for the Seawolves. All this was a display of why it can be difficult to determine comparative skill between opponents with clear differences in skill, but there were some things that were apparent from play. Seattle moved between ruck phases quite rapidly and generally made ball handling decisions faster than they did last year, zooming from side to side and using their greater speed to push forward in their phases. Warner touched down his second try of the afternoon in the 16th minute, followed by Bennett in the 21st, and although Coetzer missed the near-touchline conversion on Warner's second try, Seattle led 40-0 just after the water break. On the flip side, there were some unforced ball-handling errors (this is a known trade-off of fast play). A try-threatening nascent breakaway in Harpooners territory fell apart with a breakdown in connection between Coetzer and Rossouw, both in a near-sprint in the 26th minute. Had that been handled cleanly, it would have been one of the more electric tries in a game full of them, so perhaps that shows why Seattle is going for such an aggressive style of attack this year; the risk of a lost ball and possession turnover is less bad than the reward of a clean break is good. There were some notable individual showings from the outmatched visitors, though. Harpooners center David Ebert showed some moxie as he beat some Seattle defenders after an 18th minute visiting lineout. His fellow center Jim Nagusa knocked down an attempted Seawolf tackler while carrying the ball in the 25th minute. The Seattle-born Sio made an impression - and got a roar from his hometown crowd - with a chip kick to himself and powerful charge for about seven meters around midfield in the 38th minute. But as a collective, the Harpooners weren't able to put together long enough phases of attack to keep themselves in the game. Seattle barreled forth for a final try and conversion on a corner lineout maul to conclude the half with either a 54-0 lead or a 52-0 lead, depending on the outcome of a 30th minute Coetzer conversion that was flagged good but seemingly wasn’t put on the board. Jones, the former Seawolf, put Hartford on the board to begin the second half, taking a penalty from near midfield through the posts for three visiting points. But the Seawolves came right back for seven, bringing the ball forward to the edge of the zone and breaking through on the left wing with a try for Boyer. Another Seattle attack saw Ryan knock Rhys Jones clean over while carrying the ball before Rhyno Herbst barreled through three Harpooners on his way to Seattle's 10th try of the game. Calvin Liulamaga showed his chops with a breakthrough try during a deep attacking phase in the 57th minute and Rossouw followed that up with a try of his own just before the second half water break to get the Seawolves to 80 points. In preseason matches, however, it is less important to rack up the score as it is to get everyone in the zone and keep everyone healthy. There were two scares at the flyhalf position on Saturday, however. Davy Coetzer went off after the first half with contact-related discomfort, and Dorian Jones (in for Coetzer) seemed to tweak his right leg on the Liulamaga try conversion. Although he clearly wasn't able to go 100%, he still attempted four more conversions and made three of them before ceding kicking duty to Divan Rossouw after the Namibian's own try and walking off the field with the trainer in the late minutes. It is unclear what the exact prognosis is for either. Getting players minutes and getting them warm applied a lot to the front row depth, as substitutions of LaRome White and Charlie Walsh for Rhyno Herbst and Paddy Ryan led to props Mason Pederson and Dewald Donald playing flanker and lock, respectively. On the other side, an exciting tackle from the Harpooners' Matt Beacon and a breakaway by prop Freddy Tafuna were a couple of the plays of note. But by the time Ina Futi secured his brace in the last play of the game, the Seawolves had scored so much that the scoreboard - which can only display scores up to 99 - wasn't keeping track anymore. The score was either the announced 111-3 or it was 113-3, the difference being Schrödinger’s conversion. ### How did this team prepare for their upcoming matches against peer powers? The 2025 Seawolves were slow out of the gate, in part thanks to the team’s lack of competitive preseason matches. They got the fans geared up with festivities versus the Seattle Rugby Club (whose alums also include Seawolves such as Ina Futi), but against teams that held preseason games against MLR competition, they weren’t as on top of things as they could have been. That’s where the South Africa trip came in. The Seawolves spent two weeks in Cape Town, training in the sun and getting to use the DHL Stormers’ facilities a couple of times. Seattle’s partnership with the Stormers, a club side in the United Rugby Championship, is intended to be a long-term thing. The tour concluded with a match between the Stormers’ reserve side in the second-level Currie Cup - referred to as DHL Stormers XXIII - and the Seawolves, taking place in DHL Stadium in Cape Town. “They were really accommodating: coaches, players, everyone there welcomed us in,” said Seawolves assistant head coach Robbie Abel. “So we got to do a lot with them and watch them train, meet with the coaches and really just soak everything up that we could from them.” Seattle was looking to learn a lot from the trip: how the team fared against opponents in a much more established competition in one of the rugby-playing hotbeds of the world, how the group could bond together in a nothing-but-rugby environment, and how to bring back an extra edge to MLR play. “It was great for us as coaches as well, meeting new coaches,” said Seattle assistant coach for backs and attack Stephen Brett. Of course, playing on grass fields couldn’t have hurt the experience. The match was not televised in full, but it, like the one against the Harpooners, displayed a marked difference in skill, but there the similarities end. For one, the difference between the Seawolves and Stormers XXIII was far smaller than that between the Harpooners and Seawolves; and for the other, the difference ran the other way. But the final score of 45-14, while a big defeat, was a tally not unheard of between teams in the same competition. Even with the Stormers XXIII being comparatively weak compared to other Currie Cup sides, they still were probably the toughest team Seattle has faced in its history. On the one hand, American rugby - as can be seen from the USA Eagles results, though this applies at the professional club level, too - still has quite a ways to go. On the other, Seattle held a decently close 17-7 score through half and managed two tries against their hosts. They had some of that quickness on the ball that they displayed against Hartford, and a lot of it was honed on their own as they meshed together over those two weeks in Cape Town. Whether Seattle’s new-look preseason in both hemispheres has done its job to prepare the team is a question that cannot yet be answered. The Seawolves have their first game of the regular season on Friday, April 3 against Old Glory DC, a home fixture at 7:30 p.m. Pacific.