SaberCats open season at Dallas
With just a few adjustments to a team that reached the Western Conference finals in 2022, the Houston SaberCats will kick off the new Major League Rugby (MLR) season this Sunday at Choctaw Stadium in Arlington against a Dallas Jackals team that went through deep changes on and off the field.
In the only match of their preseason, the SaberCats defeated the New England Free Jacks 34-21 last week at AVEVA Stadium on a cold and windy night.
Led by experienced South African coach Pote Human and under the watchful eye of his compatriot and the team’s director Heyneke Meyer, a former Springboks (South Africa national side) coach, the hosts scored five tries against three.
Houston’s pack was led by experienced back row and former USA 7s star Danny Barrett, who started as captain in place of veteran South African hooker Dean Muir, who came in later as a substitute and replaced Axel Zapata in the front row.
Zapata is the only Argentine that stayed with Houston from the large group of players from the South American country that played for the SaberCats in past seasons. Among them, prop Juan Pablo Zeiss and utility back Marcos Moroni moved to Dallas in the off season.
Californian back Christian Dyer, an international with the US Eagles national team during the qualifiers for the World Cup in France later this year, started in a back line that did not have as much action. That was due to the dominance of their forwards, aside from the most used tactical option to play for territory with kicks from the halves.
The SaberCats, who had their best season last year when they reached the Western Conference final where they lost to the
Seattle Seawolves, had a good start and a good end to their preparation game against the Free Jacks, but in the middle they left some uncertainties ahead of the new season.
Their rivals in the opening game of the season should not be the most difficult since Dallas is going through a complete renovation after their poor campaign from last year.
Part of the franchise was acquired by a group of Argentine investors and thus allowed the arrival of Agustín Cavalieri, an Argentine coach who came to the MLR after working successfully for several seasons in Italy.
A big Argentine group also reinforced the roster, including back row Conrado Roura, a former 7s international who returned to Dallas, and former SaberCats Zeiss and Moroni.
They were joined by their compatriots Tomás Baravalle (a hooker who parted ways with Benetton Treviso in Italy), prop Joaquín Horcada, second row Lucas Bur, back row Jerónimo Gómez Vara, flyhalfs Martín Elías, Alejandro Torres and Matías Caramuti, wing Tomás Malanos, center Juan Pablo Aguirre and scrum half Pedro Imhoff, all with experience in youth or senior representative teams in their home country.
Undoubtedly, it is a team and a franchise in full reconstruction. In their preparation match against the New Orleans Gold they suffered a huge loss by 19-45.