Ranger Picks

There is the official league table, and then there is the title race hiding in plain sight.

Since the first weekend of Major League Rugby, a continuous cup has been quietly building an alternate history of the league. The rules are simple: if you hold the cup, every regular-season and postseason match you play becomes a title defense. Win, and you keep it. Lose, and the team that beat you takes the cup.

That simple rule produces a lineage that makes almost every era of MLR feel a little different.

NOLA Gold gets the honor of being the first-ever holder, claiming the cup in 2018 - Season 1, Week 1. But the early years did not stay still for long. Austin Elite¹, Utah Warriors, and then Seattle Seawolves all took turns becoming first-time holders in the opening weeks of the competition. By the end of that first season, Seattle had already stamped itself on the history of the cup, finishing 2018 as champion and then doing it again in 2019.

If Seattle defined the beginning, San Diego Legion defined the long haul. No team in the completed data has spent more time with the cup. San Diego leads the all-time table with 30 cup matches as holder and 22 successful defenses, both the best marks in the dataset. The single greatest reign belongs to San Diego as well: an 11-match run stretching through the heart of 2023 and into the semifinal before losing it in the final.

Then there is New England Free Jacks, the team that has come to dominate the modern chapter of the cup. New England first entered the lineage in 2021, Week 8. Since then it has piled up 20 cup matches as holder, matched only by Seattle, and enters 2026 as the reigning champion. Even more impressively, New England finished 2023, 2024, and 2025 with the cup still in hand, giving this era of the Continuous Cup a clear modern standard-bearer.

The most fun part of a lineal title is how it changes what counts as a big match. Regular-season fixtures suddenly feel loaded with extra stakes. Playoff games feel even heavier. In fact, the cup changed hands in the postseason multiple times, including a pair of finals that produced a new champion. That is exactly what makes the concept so sticky: the title is always alive, always vulnerable, always one upset away from moving somewhere new.

MLR Season 9 (2026) brings formal league recognition and a physical trophy. Along with a name - the MLR Supporters Challenge Cup (or “The Old Mate").

Then there is the other side of the ledger: the teams still chasing their first piece of cup history. As of 2026, Anthem Rugby Carolina, California Legion, Dallas Jackals, RFC LA, and Miami Sharks have yet to hold the Old Mate. Of these teams, only Anthem and newcomer California are still in contention. That gives every future defense involving those clubs an extra bit of tension. They are not just trying to win a game. They are trying to write themselves into the lineage.

That is what makes this such a great supporters-created trophy. It turns the entire history of the league into one long title fight.