Pro Rugby is coming to San Diego

There’s a new team in town.

The San Diego Legion, a Major League Rugby team is joining America’s Finest City this spring in the league’s inaugural season.

On Wednesday night, the team’s head coach Rob Hoadley, general manager Matt Hawkins, as well as several high-profile players, joined members of the media for a presentation and Q&A session at TRUST Restaurant in Hillcrest. The MLR’s inaugural season launches on April 21.

There are seven other teams in the MLR: Austin Elite Rugby, NOLA Gold, Utah Warriors, Glendale Raptors, Houston SaberCats, Seattle Seawolves and most recently, Rugby United NY. Hawkins and MLR commissioner Dean Howes stopped by the NBC 7 studio to talk about how the team will integrate into the San Diego sports culture.

“The most exciting part of this is that you establish something that lasts for a long, long time." Howes said. “If we can’t build something that our children and grandchildren can enjoy then we’re not doing what we really should be doing.”

Hawkins was most excited by how he felt the rugby community was so established in San Diego.

“The opportunity for us was to grab a group of people that could actually represent San Diego and represent the community as a whole,” said Hawkins of the local base for the team. “The rugby community here [in San Diego] is very robust and we’ve sort of built on that with some local guys that are going to fold into the team and some international flare as well as our national team players. We’re very excited about the squad that we’ve put together.”