SALT LAKE CITY — Major League Rugby announced Thursday that it was canceling the remainder of the 2020 season.
For the Utah Warriors, who were 2-2-1 through five games, the original suspension of the season came last Thursday, right before the March 13 home opener at Zions Bank Stadium for the Warriors, and was a letdown for the team.
“Mixed emotions. Obviously, the reality of the enormity of the situation that we’re in but there’s also the mental side of it,” Utah Warriors coach Chris Latham said. “These guys, they put in a lot of hard work. We really started to come into some really good form and we were starting to forge some really close bonds with the group.”
Then came the news that the remainder of the MLR season was canceled.
“We told the players yesterday. It was a difficult conversation, obviously a disappointing conversation but one that I think everyone understands that we’re in some unprecedented and uncharted waters,” Utah Warriors CEO and general manager Kimball Kjar said. “I think everyone kind of felt like something like this was going to happen.”
The MLR Board of Governors voted Wednesday afternoon to cancel the season, rather than suspend it.
“We tried in every which way to see if we could come back with some type of viable, competitive season. The hard part was in each of those scenarios, you ended up with this looming factor of unknowns, most notably in and around the government and what the government was going to do or not do, say or not say, allow or not allow,” Kjar said.
Another issue was international players and how the countries they hail from would handle their borders the further along the pandemic gets. Players on the Warriors’ roster are from New Zealand, South Africa, Australia and the U.S., among other countries.
“We have 12 international players on our roster that come from 10 different countries. There’s all those other factors of what the other countries are doing with their borders,” Kjar said. “When you piece all of that together, it was the right decision to just let these players take care of their families, focus on what they need to focus on now and try and pivot and move towards looking at 2021 making sure we come back stronger.”
Major League Rugby was in its third season of operation prior to the cancellation. The Warriors have been a franchise since the league’s inaugural season.
Even though the season was cut short, Kjar is optimistic about the future of the league, which includes expansion in the future.
“I have no doubts. We’re going to be in a much better position. In fact, we’re going to be making some announcements in terms of the growth league, we’re looking to expand from 12 teams to 14 teams, that was slated well before this outbreak of COVID-19,” Kjar said. “I have no doubt that the league is going to be able to not only survive, but we’re going to be able to thrive now that we have some time to plan and coordinate and structure our setup for 2021.”
The Warriors say they will be contacting all individual and season ticket holders with instructions on how to request a refund.
In the short term, Kjar and the Warriors are dealing with the coronavirus like everyone else.
“At the end of the day, this is really more of a human story rather than a sports story. It’s trying to do right by the players, the staff, the fans and all the different stakeholders, given the chaos and some of the unknown variables that we’re all dealing with and how to deal with a pandemic like this and how that affects our families and all of our day-to-day interactions with people,” Kjar said.