Seawolves Secure Home Playoff Spot, Resoundingly Best Legion 33-19
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Seattle Seawolves flyhalf Davy Coetzer (10) makes a conversion during the first half of Seattle’s 33-19 win over the California Legion on June 7, 2026 at Starfire Sports in Tukwila, Wash. Image credit: Eric Hiller/Seattle Seawolves. [/caption]
TUKWILA, Wash. - In the end, the 10-game MLR season was just long enough for the Seawolves to get into second place in the league and secure a home playoff spot. It will be déjà vu for both teams who played on Sunday night, as they will face off in the same venue and see who will go up against either the Chicago Hounds or Old Glory DC (but probably the Hounds).
Going into the match, the Seawolves trailed the Legion by three points in the standings, needing to either tie the team in the standings (and win the tiebreaker through having more wins) or move ahead of their West Coast rival.
No tiebreakers were needed. Despite a few vigorous bursts of energy from the visiting Legion, Seattle took advantage of plenty of mistakes from their opponent and showed some of the best defending they had all season, and when time ran out for the visitors, the Seawolves’ 33-19 victory was more than enough to leapfrog the Legion and secure hosting rights for next week’s semifinal.
The starting roster was little changed from the week previous, though the reserves saw the return of loose forward Kalisi Moli and the Seawolves debut of offseason acquisition Rufus McLean.
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California came in with some powerful players of their own, most notably scrumhalf Gonzalo Bertranou, the man whose work rate had sliced and diced the Seawolves in the first meeting between these two sides. Inside center Billy Meakes, big back rowers Lance Williams and Ed Timpson, and lock Jason Damm brought plenty of power to the lineup, while flyhalf Coby Miln entered with a shot at getting to 100 points on the season.
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Seattle was clinical early inside the 22, getting key early tries to put themselves in the driver’s seat.
The Seawolves immediately found themselves pushed back to their own try line as the Legion won a penalty around midfield and turned it into plenty of pressure at the goal line. Unlike in many earlier games against such energetic sides, the Seawolves held the line for quite a while, a harbinger for the stalwart defense that would show later on in the game. It wasn’t quite as rock-solid as it would become - California’s possession got extended due to penalties - but Seattle showed excellent preparation for Bertranou’s quick restarts and the Legion’s speedy, scrappy style of play. Big tackles came in from everyone in the line.
But the early penalties came to a crescendo in the sixth minute as loosehead prop Ezekiel Lindenmuth was shown a yellow. The Legion opted for a scrum five meters out, and as they found the energy to shove Seattle backwards, eightman Cyrille Cama sent it over to Bertranou and the scrumhalf landed the game’s first try. Coby Miln missed the conversion, but it was still a five-point lead.
Pressure continued from the visitors for quite some time, but a crooked California lineout in the 11th minute finally gave Seattle a chance at possession. A couple of scrum resets occurred before Seawolves tighthead Mason Pedersen bested Legion loosehead Michael Scott, getting him to collapse and giving the home side a penalty. Another penalty (this time on California flanker Lance Milliams) led to the Seawolves getting a lineout five meters away, and the maul broke through a couple seconds of resistance to get Paddy Ryan in the try zone and knot things up in the 15th. Davy Coetzer made the conversion to bring his team a 7-5 lead.
The Seawolves quickly brought it back to that area of the pitch upon the following kickoff, as Coetzer’s box kick turned into a five meter lineout as several Legion players couldn’t get a handle on the ball and let it fall out the end of the try zone. The Seawolves had a man advantage as visiting openside flanker Ed Timpson went to the bin, Seattle didn’t punch it through during that run of play; California summoned a show of defensive force and the Seawolves had to recover possession.
California’s propensity for penalties helped Seattle out once more and the Seawolves had yet another lineout deep in attacking territory. The Seawolves pushed forward up the middle for a couple minutes, continually denied by the Legion forwards, but play moved to the touchline and Duncan Matthews found an open space for five points. Coetzer’s second conversion made it 14-5 with 10 minutes left in the half.
A couple more Legion penalties around midfield resulted in Seattle entering the 22 soon after the try, and it only took a few looks around each side for a window to open up along the touchline and Dan Kriel to barrel in for the Seawolves’ third try. Coetzer sent in his third conversion, all from the side of the pitch, and the early deficit had quickly turned into a 16-point Seawolves lead.
But the Legion finally summoned that ability to turn possession into position as the half neared its end, and as the newly-returned Timpson broke between JP Smith and Divan Rossouw to land a try. Miln’s conversion brought it to 21-12, and as California roared forward from one half of the pitch to the other, the visitors threatened to go into the sheds with some lightning momentum. A whistle allowed Seattle to kick to touch and finish the half, however, and the lead held.
More tries early and stalwart defense late gave Seattle a home field-clinching second half.
Seattle began the second half with sorely-needed initiative. Although opening the final 40 with a sizable lead, they had shown an apparent energy deficit in the last minutes of the first half and the Legion had the ability to punch through a nine-point cushion quite quickly.
Like most of their earlier entries into the 22, the Seawolves struck quickly and cleanly. They shoved forward with each successive ruck, reached the try line after a Legion penalty, and pick-and-go plays shredded through the remaining defense. Pedersen was the one to climb over his opponents and land the ball in the try zone, securing the bonus point and extending the lead to 28-12 with Coetzer’s fourth conversion.
Seawolves attacks continued with similar power in the ensuing minutes, though the Legion were able to withstand a push and neither team was able to push past midfield until the 58th, when the second of the Legion’s scrum penalties allowed Coetzer to kick to touch near the attacking 22. Continued power in the rucks brought Seattle clearly into the final stretch of the pitch, and a high tackle by California hooker Ben Sugars gave Seattle a penalty.
A referee-initiated review was called to see if Sugars’ contact was card-worthy, but though that was cleared, the Legion challenged that Lindenmuth had made some illegal contact of his own on an ensuing cleanout. That was also denied, and Seattle took the original penalty kick into touch to set up a corner lineout. California pushed against the maul, but as Seattle went back and forth along the try line, a hole opened up for Kriel to land the ball in the zone on the touchline. Though Coetzer missed his kick, Seattle’s advantage grew to 33-12.
The home side had a chance to double down and continue growing the lead as a thunderous Ina Futi tackle stunned California into not releasing the ball. Seattle had a lineout at the 22 and pushed forwards for a minute or so, tumbling forward and being pressed back, and although they had a golden opportunity when the Legion muffed one of their own lineouts to give Kotze the ball five meters out from the line, the visitors held Seattle up in the zone in the 64th. The Legion got the ball back on a knock-on later in the minute and finally had some extended possession to try and break through.
Time was on Seattle’s side, but they needed to keep the Legion from speeding the game up and racking up one try after another. The visitors pushed slowly to midfield, stopped by keyed-in tacklers one breakdown after another. The Seawolves played the game clinically and kept the visitors from startling them, quickly reaching their lines and preventing the breakaways that had killed them on the road.
Timpson worked a little beyond 10 meters past midfield with a post-contact run, but even as explosive California players shoved Seattle back inch by inch, the clock was winding down. The Legion finally had a line break in the 69th as Miln zoomed past Lindenmuth, Nick Boyer, and Marno Redelinghuys, but although he might have had a line on the try zone all by himself, he went for the offload under pressure from Coetzer and the ball fell forward for a Seattle scrum.
The Seawolves used the set piece to expand the space behind them, but again the visitors shoved and lurched over the 22 briefly. The pressure finally abated when Paddy Ryan jackaled the ball out of California’s hands in the 71st minute, and continued errors by the visitors nixed their opportunities to start the engine. Seattle’s offense also deteriorated in these late minutes - another entry into Legion’s 22 ended as Timpson tackled Callum Botchar into touch - but with the team sturdy as a rock on the other side of the ball, the home playoff game was all but assured.
Meakes had a breakaway in the 76th minute that kept the Legion’s hopes of a home playoff game alive by a strand of horsehair, but he offloaded to Rossouw, who is a Seattle Seawolf. Alex Lopeti managed another breakaway in the 78th, with Seattle’s edge finally dulling, but the home side again pushed their opponents back.
Cassh Maluia finally brought it to the try line later in the minute with a break of his own and Legion prop Justus Tavai landed it in the zone. Rhyno Herbst got sent to the bin for cynical play and Miln converted, but a Legion knock-on deep in the visitors’ own half allowed the Seawolves to finish the game out.
Tiai Vavao showed tremendous back row chops in a full second half as he joined a rock-solid forward pack.
Seawolves first-round 2025 MLR Draft pick Tiai Vavao has developed quite smoothly in the back row during the 2026 season, playing both as a blindside flanker and as an eightman in much of the season. Just like in Central Washington University, Vavao is a solid, clinical player, though he noted the jump in play compared to his time in college.
The rookie back rower credited some of his development to the experienced teammates he had around him during the course of the season.
“We have a lot of good leaders: Rieky (Hattingh), Paddy, Marno, at least in my position group,” Vavao told Emerald City Spectrum. “It’s a good environment, we have a lot of fun.”
Vavao found himself in the midst of some of those veterans, who had already formed a locked-in line when he subbed on for Riekert Hattingh at the beginning of the second half, but over the course of the final 40 minutes, the rookie wound up making some key plays, most notably a tough tackle against winger Joe Mano during the visitors’ post-hydration push. It was a part of a whole-team effort to keep track of the quick-moving Legion and prevent the plays that had sunk Seattle their first go around against them.
“We watched film on them all week, we know they play fast, we know they just like to play, so we couldn’t really turn our backs on them,” Vavao said.
These preventative measures lowered the Legion’s break totals compared to the teams’ first meeting, but the visitors still gained 1,128 total meters in the field to Seattle’s 690; it was the takeaways by the Seawolves and the Legion’s many penalties that tilted things so heavily in the visitors’ favor.
Seattle hasn’t always had such clinical play from their forward pack all year, but the performance that they put together on Sunday night was quite promising from everyone involved. Seattle made 220 tackles in total, with Mason Pedersen leading all players with 24 in total. Pedersen was one of the brightest standouts in the front row, playing 72 minutes and winning multiple scrum penalties.
“We’ve been building week-on-week. The backs do the fun stuff, we do the dirty work,” Pedersen said. “And that’s what we’re built on, but we just keep on going, y’know?”
Dan Kriel showed up with another all-around performance, securing a brace.
As Kriel himself would tell you, the two tries he personally scored were more incidental to the underlying facts of his performance. As he had all year since coming back from injury, the inside center did everything he needed to do and then some. His 109 total meters were largely post-contact, with Kriel forming the basis of Seattle’s advances on the ground. He personally exploited California’s weak side twice, but this is where the “team try” adage applies: those points (and the ones not scored by Kriel) couldn’t have happened if Kriel and others hadn’t gotten Seattle into those spaces.
“I think we had a good plan throughout the week, and we just stuck to it really well tonight,” Kriel told Emerald City Spectrum. “We played in the right areas, we stuck to our plan, and fortunately enough, it paid off for us.”
While some of the biggest boosts to the team have been newcomers like Davy Coetzer and Paddy Ryan, Kriel has headlined the contributions of longtime Seawolves to the 2026 side. So have Rhyno Herbst, who made 22 tackles, and Divan Rossouw, who had two takeaways. Both showed explosivity with the ball in addition to without it, part of the whole team effort it took to beat the Legion.
The West Coast matchup has a slightly different flavor with the merged Legion, but the sense of rivalry is still there.
One of MLR’s oldest rivalries was the battle between the Seawolves and the San Diego Legion, a series where Seattle mostly held the upper hand but didn’t go without some stinging defeats. When San Diego and Rugby Football Club Los Angeles merged after the 2025 season, the newly-formed California Legion became the only West Coast team besides the Seawolves.
The Seawolves-Legion rivalry hasn’t gone away, even if it has changed.
“It’s still sort of a West Coast rivalry and a great West Coast clash, so I don’t think that will ever change,” Kriel said.
As a longtime Seawolf, Kriel was there for many of the big games the two sides have played against each other. So was JP Smith, who played as a wing on Sunday but logged plenty of minutes as a scrumhalf against San Diego back in the day and who logged his 115th MLR appearance in that game. Smith’s observations were similar to Kriel’s, though he noted the change in tenor.
“I think it has changed, but there’s always the, you know, best of the West,” Smith noted.
The two teams aren’t done with each other. Exactly one week after the 7:00 pm Sunday kickoff in the 10th game of the regular season, the MLR semifinal will occur on Sunday, June 14, kicking off at 7:00 pm. Both teams have won once against the other during the regular season, each at home, but the Seawolves will have an edge going into the semifinal game thanks to the outcome of Sunday’s match.
Seattle head coach Allen Clarke noted the strangeness of playing the same team in the same place twice in a row.
“It makes the review process and preview process a little bit quicker, that’s for sure,” Clarke said with a slight smile on his face. “But, yeah, it was a bit strange afterwards, ‘cause we were all saying to each other, ‘we’ll see you next week.’”
But with their resounding victory in the first round, the Seawolves have a clear blueprint for how to punch their ticket to the MLR Final in Chicago.
