Old Glory’s season comes down to the next two games. Chicago’s season, in one sense, is already complete – the #1 seed is locked, the playoff berth secured, and Saturday at George Mason Stadium is the first of two road trips to close out the regular season with an unbeaten record still intact. The stakes could not be more different for the two teams. And somewhere in the middle of it all, two centers will spend 80 minutes trying to impose their will on the same patch of turf.
Ross Depperschmidt’s path to professional rugby is not the one you would draw up. He grew up in Flower Mound, a suburb of Dallas, playing gridiron football and baseball before finding the game at the University of Alabama, where he eventually became Co-Captain, Vice-President, and Assistant Coach of the college rugby program. He joined NOLA Gold in 2019 and spent seven seasons there before the club withdrew from the MLR. Old Glory signed him in January this year, and his 50th career appearance in the league came on his debut for them in Week 2. There is something quietly tenacious about a player who has kept finding a way to stay in this league through everything it has thrown at him.
This season,n he has been a steady, physical presence in Old Glory’s midfield – a team whose identity is built almost entirely on defensive solidity. Simon Cross’s side conceded fewer tries than anyone else in the league, and Depperschmidt’s 62 tackles are a significant part of why that number stays low. Two tries, modest meters, and a carry game that reflects a man used within a system rather than asked to create.
Lopeti is the counter-argument in almost every attacking category. The Bay Area-born USA international, of Tongan heritage, came to Chicago from San Diego and has been one of the Hounds’ most effective midfield weapons in the most dominant single-season campaign MLR has seen. He scored on his Chicago debut in Week 2 and added another the following week against California. Twenty-six USA caps, 57 carries this season, 21 defenders beaten. His younger brother Alex plays for California, giving the Lopeti name two sides of the league’s best attack-versus-defense fixture this week.
The tries are level. Everything else points in one direction. Lopeti has made more than twice as many meters and beaten more than five times as many defenders – the gap reflects two completely different roles in two completely different systems. The tackle count is almost identical, which is the one genuinely even number in this matchup, and perhaps the most telling: both players are doing the defensive work at a near-identical rate regardless of how differently they are used in attack.
Chicago has never won on the road at Old Glory. They lost here in 2023 and drew in 2024. They have also never been this good, and they will know it. Old Glory, meanwhile, has everything to play for and the league’s best defensive record to lean on. Saturday’s Salute to First Responders match will be played in front of a crowd that knows exactly what is at stake. Depperschmidt, a man who has been in this league longer than most, understands that better than anyone. So does Lopeti, who arrived at Chicago this season specifically to be part of something historic.
Chicago has nothing left to prove. Old Glory has everything left to play for. The centers know which side of that equation they’re on.
