Domestic Rugby in the USA has had its share of ups and downs over the last few seasons – while the existing semi-pro structure brought us some nice jerseys, it wasn’t the fully-fledged pro league that the country seemed to need, but change was afoot… Last year PRO Rugby became the USA’s first pro domestic league, and even brought a new kit maker to the rugby game… but the league was blighted by disorganisation (the teams began playing before team names had even been decided), financial issues, and wound up after less than a year.
Which brings us to Major League Rugby – a fully pro seven-team league with blue-chip broadcasters and a sense that maybe this time we’re in it for the long run.
Which brings us to the most important part of the MLR development, of course – the jerseys! All seven teams in this inaugural season will be kitted out by Australian rugby brand XBlades, and we’ll be kicking off by looking at the designs they’ve created for the Seattle Seawolves.
The Seawolves primary colours are sensibly, ahem, borrowed from the city’s most successful sporting franchise – the Seahawks in the NFL. So just like the Seahawks the Seawolves are using a dark blue primary jersey accented by lime and grey.
XBlades has done a really, really nice job with this shirt to be honest – we love the way that the hoops are accented with contrasting colour pinstripes either side, while we like the subtle hashed texture to the blue bits, too.
It’s clean, it’s classy, it’s hoops… and you know how much we like those… even like the gnarly ‘angry fish’ logo is kind of endearing! All in all, we are very taken indeed.
The away jersey is something very different from the classicly-vibed home design, but again, that’s no bad thing. The black to green fade is striking and unique, and we think the cool triangle-based pattern on the shirt looks very cool too.
All in all then, these two jerseys are a very promising start for Major League rugby, and for the Seawolves themselves – clearly we’re not the only ones who think so, as the Crusaders and Canterbury Rugby Union have bought a stake in the Seawolves. Here’s hoping this is the start of something significant.
Rugby Shirt Watch 
Very nice! I hope the MLR is here to stay.