The biggest rivalry in Major League Rugby returns to Torero Stadium on Sunday, Feb. 16 when the San Diego Legion and Seattle Seawolves open the 2025 season in the opening week.
The Legion and Seawolves will meet for the 18th time in MLR history, the most head-to-head matchups between two teams in league history.
Sunday will mark the second time since the 2019 MLR Championship that San Diego and Seattle meet at the site of that match, and the first time since 2020.
“It’s kind of a nostalgic feeling going back there,” prop Nate Sylvia said about the return to Torero Stadium.
Sylvia is the only member of the Legion’s 2019 season still with the team, although San Diego prop Djustice Sears-Duru played for the Seawolves in that match.
On the other side, it’s where the Seawolves won both their championships in 2018 and 2019. The playoffs were hosted at neutral sites in 2018 before the league switched to the highest-seeded team hosting the championship match from 2019 to 2022.
“I think it's definitely a special stadium. I quite like the stadium. It's nice and kind of like a drop, drop down into a hole. The walk from the change rooms, it's always an interesting walk when you walk past the San Diego fans,” Seawolves scrum-half JP Smith told reporters earlier this week of what he remembers about Torero Stadium.
He admitted to not remembering much from the championship match in 2019 but remembered the previous time the two faced off at Torero Stadium during a torrential downpour in February 2019.
“It must have probably been one of the worst games I've ever played in,” Smith said.
Smith is the lone member of the 2019 team still with Seattle although he’ll share the pitch with Sears-Duru.
It will be the fourth time in eight years that the Legion and Seawolves open the season against each other. They previously did so in 2018, 2020 and 2024.
The Legion’s move back to Torero Stadium came after a one-year stint at San Diego State University’s Sports Deck in 2022 and a two-year stint at Snapdragon Stadium in 2023 and 2024.
A history of the Legion-Seawolves rivalry
The two teams met in the regular season 12 times. The Legion took seven of those but they’re 1-4 in the playoffs against Seattle.
They’ve met in the playoffs every year except for 2021, the only season either team missed the playoffs.
Since the 2019 season, Seattle made it to two championships and lost both (2022, 2024). San Diego made it to the Final in 2023 but lost to the New England Free Jacks, who are back-to-back defending champions after their win over the Seawolves at Snapdragon Stadium last season.
Seattle took both matchups in 2018 while the Legion took both regular-season matches in 2019 before they lost to the Seawolves in the final. San Diego took the lone matchup in 2020 and the series was split in 2021.
Seattle swept the 2022 series, including the Western Conference Semifinal before the Legion returned the favor in 2023 with the Western Conference Final win.
The regular-season series was split last season before Seattle again won in the Western Conference semifinal.
