The 2019 Major League Rugby Final was the championship match of the 2nd season of

Major League Rugby Major League Rugby (MLR or USMLR) is a professional rugby union competition and the top-level championship for clubs in North America. In the 2022 season it was contested by thirteen teams: twelve from the United States and one from Canada. Off ...

(MLR), a rugby union club competition in the United States. It was played on June 16, 2019, at Torero Stadium in San Diego, California, between the San Diego Legion and the

Seattle Seawolves The Seattle Seawolves are an American professional rugby union team based in Tukwila, Washington. The team was founded in 2017 and competes in Major League Rugby (MLR), the top-level rugby union competition in the United States that began play ...

. San Diego and Seattle finished first and second in the regular season, respectively, and advanced to the final after defeating

New York New York most commonly refers to: * New York City, the most populous city in the United States, located in the state of New York * New York (state), a state in the northeastern United States New York may also refer to: Film and television * '' ...

and Toronto in the semifinals. The Seattle team was the defending champion, having won the 2018 final. Seattle defeated San Diego 26–23 in the 2019 final to take their second championship title.

Background

The

2019 Major League Rugby season The 2019 Major League Rugby season was the second season of Major League Rugby, the professional rugby union competition sanctioned by USA Rugby. The regular season began on January 26 and concluded on June 2. Two teams made their debu ...

began in January 2019 with nine teams all playing each other home and away. The Seattle Seawolves won the previous season's championship, defeating the

Glendale Raptors The American Raptors is a professional rugby union team based in the municipality of Glendale in Colorado. The team plays in the transcontinental Super Rugby Americas competition . Established as the Glendale Raptors in 2006, the team was a found ...

at Torero Stadium in San Diego. Seattle and San Diego played each other twice during the regular season, ending in 17–13 and 28–22 victories for the Legion.

Venue

Torero Stadium, home field of Major League Rugby team San Diego Legion, was selected as the venue for the final after the team finished as the top seed in the regular season. The stadium with a seating capacity of 6,000 on the campus of the

University of San Diego The University of San Diego (USD) is a private Roman Catholic research university in San Diego, California. Chartered in July 1949 as the independent San Diego College for Women and San Diego University (comprising the College for Men and Schoo ...

is also home to the various athletics teams of the university.

Broadcasting

The match was broadcast nationally on CBS. It received a rating of 0.34 (510,000).

Match

Details

Post-match

The defending champion Seattle Seawolves was once again awarded the "America's Championship Shield", which was changed to a metal shield in the shape of the MLR logo. Seawolves scrum-half JP Smith was named the MLR Championship Series " man of the match".

References

{{Major League Rugby Major League Rugby Finals 2019 in American rugby union Rugby union matches