photo: Glendale Raptors

PRO Rugby confirm Denver franchise

PRO Rugby has at last confirmed the location of the fifth and final franchise for the inaugural season of the new American professional rugby competition, set to launch on April 17 of this year. As reported in November and revealed definitively three weeks ago on Americas Rugby News, Denver will have a team playing its home games out of Infinity Park, currently the home of Pacific Rugby Premiership side Glendale Raptors. In a statement on social media, the league says it intends to reveal the full schedule and rosters in the near future.

“PRO Rugby is pleased to announce that Denver will be the fifth team competing in our inaugural season. We are excited to play matches and train at Infinity Park Stadium in the City of Glendale. We wish to thank all our friends in the City of Glendale for the help and support they gave us in bringing a professional rugby team to Denver.

With this announcement PRO Rugby completes the league roster for our inaugural season. We are proud and thankful to start our introduction of professional rugby to the USA in these five markets. We are looking forward to increasing the number of teams in our second season so we can start including more cities into our growing league. A final league schedule, team rosters, and game day TV distribution will be announced shortly.”

Infinity Park is specifically geared for rugby with a capacity of 4,000. It opened in 2007 and has since hosted three US Eagles test matches – Russia in 2010, Canada in 2011, and Georgia in 2012. It also regularly hosts collegiate rugby matches as well as the annual Serevi RugbyTown Sevens tournament.

With that the five franchises of PRO Rugby are:

TEAM HOME FIELD  HEAD COACH
Columbus, Ohio Memorial Park Paule Barford
Denver, Colorado Infinity Park Sean O’Leary
Sacramento, California Bonney Field Luke Gross
San Diego, California Torero Stadium Ray Egan
San Francisco, California Boxer Stadium Paul Keeler

EDIT: Sean O’Leary has now been named Head Coach of the Denver franchise. 

About Americas Rugby News

Formally created in June 2015, this website's goal is to increase media exposure of the Tier 2 rugby nations, and create a hub with a focus on the stories of rugby in the Americas - North, Central and South.

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