SAN DIEGO — At 5-foot-5 and 135 pounds wringing wet as a high school senior, Nate Augspurger was a hard-hitting safety back home in Minneapolis.
Augspurger grew up a Vikings fan, and while not exactly Harrison Smith, he was tough, fast and resilient — characteristics that go a long way in the sport of rugby. And this season, the 33-year-old scrum-half, now 5-foot-7 and 180 pounds, is one of the key cogs for the San Diego Legion, who will play for their first Major League Rugby title when they face the New England Free Jacks in the MLR Championship Final in Chicago on Saturday (3 p.m. ET on FOX).
Major League Rugby is a 12-team league broken into Western and Eastern conferences. The Legion defeated Eastern Conference champion New England earlier this season 26-12.
After playing for the USA rugby team, Augspurger has been with the Legion since the team’s start in MLR in 2018. At 16-1 and winners of 14 straight, San Diego is having its best season ever.
While talented, the Legion’s success can also be attributed to an intense connectivity and chemistry built through several team bonding experiences over the duration of a long, grinding season. Those events included a military style boot camp to start the year, beach Olympics on the San Diego sand and weekly dinners hosted at the Solana Beach home of team owner Ryan Patterson.
“We know who we are, and we don’t try to be anybody else,” Augspurger said. “We just fine-tune what we’re about. We compete like hell. There’s dudes on this team that are just competitive as all get-out.
“We don’t turn into a new beast now. We’ve been the beast; we’ve been the problem all year. Everybody’s believed in that. They are not just words on the wall.”
Legion head coach Danny Lee, a New Zealand native who grew up playing the game, was tasked with changing the culture when he took over last season. The Legion made the playoffs in Lee’s first year, losing to the Seattle Seawolves in the Western Conference finals.
Lee said that team was not built the way he wanted, however, and he worked in the offseason to increase the physicality on the roster. Because of the smaller fields used in the league, Lee brought in more physical players who can play effectively in confined spaces. The Legion play their home games at Snapdragon Stadium, home of the San Diego State Aztecs. Football fields are smaller than regulation rugby pitches.
“When you’ve got a narrow field, you’ve got to punch through teams,” Lee said. “You’ve got less space. You can’t run around teams. So we looked at the way we played. We were trying to run around teams and be dynamic, but we didn’t have the space to do it. And we didn’t have the athletes to punch through teams.
“So we said we needed to be bigger, stronger and more physical. We needed the physicality to be able to get on the front foot and punch holes in the defensive line.”
The focus on more physical personnel and scheme paid off, as the Legion beat the Seawolves three times this season, including 32-10 in the Western Conference final. The Legion’s roster includes global superstar Ma’a Nonu, a 6-foot, 238-pound physical thumper who still has a huge impact on the game at 41 years old.
Nonu had an impressive 103 caps with the world-renowned New Zealand “All Blacks” national team.
“Anywhere outside of America, I suppose he wouldn’t be able to walk down the street without someone [recognizing him],” Lee said about Nonu. “But here is pretty chill for him.”
Lee said San Diego has been a nice recruitment tool for players, with its ideal climate, beaches and laid-back lifestyle. The Legion have players from 13 different countries and have adopted a military ethos playing in a military town.
“We’re the most protected team in the world,” Lee said. “I think there’s seven military bases here in San Diego. We’ve just thrived off that and used that as part of our theme.”
Before the season, Legion team manager Bo Bosier, an ex-Marine, set up a week-long training regimen at the Marine Corps Combat Center in Twentynine Palms, California. Bosier said boot-camp simulation was an integration of team building, leadership development, mindset development — and a little bit of rugby.
“All kinds of ideas were playing in our heads,” Augspurger said about the boot camp. “But it ended up being the perfect balance of rugby, physical training and then also challenging us mentally, figuring out what we want to be as a team. … It wasn’t like, ‘All right, let’s get this done.’ We were there to make the most out of it, and we really squeezed the juice out of it.”
The week included two days of pool work, martial arts training, an obstacle course and some scenario-based training. The players stayed in the barracks and got just one sheet, one blanket and one pillow — not exactly a stay at your local Marriott.
“We wanted to take the players somewhere where they were isolated,” Bosier said. “Get them away from the comforts of the beach and the sand, the fish tacos, everything that’s nice here. And put them in a place that’s very austere, where they have to kind of rely on each other and talk.
“We want our team to be able to execute the tactics. And they can only execute the tactics if they know how to work together. And the more jelled and sticky-icky they are with each other, the better those tactics work.”
The weekly dinners started out as Taco Tuesday, but because the Legion had one of their harder training days on Tuesdays, they moved the dinners to Wednesdays.
During their run to the Major League Rugby Championship Final, the Legion gathered for weekly dinners at their team owner’s house to build chemistry and camaraderie. (Photo courtesy of San Diego Legion.)
The idea for a weekly dinner came from Patterson’s wife, Jennifer. The Pattersons wanted to give the team a chance to eat and bond during the week.
“We wanted to have that intimacy and family atmosphere,” Ryan Patterson said. “The folks would come and help cook, and friends would help cook.”
Patterson said they fed 110 people at the last dinner. The menu has included Mediterranean, Italian and of course, tacos.
“You can hear them talking during the day,” Lee said of his players. “‘Going to Patterson’s tonight, I wonder what the theme is going to be?’ The boys can’t wait. It’s a free feed.”
Patterson’s children played rugby growing up, which served as the genesis for starting a professional team in San Diego. Ryan Patterson got the opportunity to start the Legion about the same time he took his kids overseas to play rugby in Ireland.
“It’s kind of a family feel,” Augspurger said about the team and the weekly dinners. “I don’t really get to go back to Minneapolis too often throughout the year. But to go over to the owner’s house and have all the team there, our wives, girlfriends, partners and kids, it’s really a family feel that’s special.”
And at their next get-together, the Legion hope to have some special hardware to share with family and friends.
Eric D. Williams has reported on the NFL for more than a decade, covering the Los Angeles Rams for Sports Illustrated, the Los Angeles Chargers for ESPN and the Seattle Seahawks for the Tacoma News Tribune. Follow him on Twitter at @eric_d_williams.
Photos courtesy of San Diego Legion.
