Mark Carney: The Man Building America’s Rugby Future From Charlotte

Anthem RC’s general manager has worked at every level of American rugby. Now, after the most transformative roster overhaul in MLR history, he and his team are ready to show what this groundbreaking franchise was always meant to become.

Mark Carney’s shoulders were already shot by the time he graduated high school in Arizona. He’d been playing men’s club rugby for Tempe Old Devils since he was sixteen, an English kid from Cumbria who’d swapped the wind-battered pitches of Sedbergh School for the Sonoran Desert. The boots got hung up. The obsession with rugby did not.

Two decades later, Carney finds himself as general manager of Major League Rugby’s most ambitious franchise — Anthem Rugby Club, the Charlotte-based team born from a groundbreaking partnership between MLR, USA Rugby, and World Rugby. When it was announced in January 2024, World Rugby Chief Executive Alan Gilpin called it “a major milestone” in an overall strategy to grow rugby in the United States. Then MLR Commissioner Nic Benson described it as “a game-changer for American rugby.” The vision was bold: create a professional team committed to developing America’s best rugby talent ahead of hosting the 2031 Rugby World Cup on home soil.

When Carney took over as GM in March 2025, the vision was intact but the results had yet to follow. Now, after a full off-season spent reshaping the roster from top to bottom, he believes the breakthrough is here.

“This is not the Anthem of ’25 or ’24,” he says. “This is our time.”

The numbers back up the ambition. Carney orchestrated sixteen-plus signings over the winter, bringing in James Scott — arguably the league’s most consistent lock over the past two seasons — from Chicago, Johan Momsen, the 2021 MLR Forward of the Year, Luke Carty, a capped USA flyhalf, and Jordan Trainor, who brings Super Rugby pedigree from New Zealand. The 2026 roster now features ten capped USA Eagles, more than any other team in the league. Anthem was the first MLR club to complete its roster for the new season.

It is, by any measure, the most transformative squad overhaul in MLR history. But Carney is quick to point out that it was not assembled in a vacuum. The roster was built in close consultation with USA Eagles head coach Scott Lawrence — a collaborative dynamic that underscores what makes Anthem’s model so significant.

“The roster development was done in conjunction with Scott,” Carney explains. “He offered input on why we should be looking at this player, and how the players we had in consideration would work within the system we are trying to establish this season.”

This partnership between franchise and national program is central to Anthem’s identity. The club was purpose-built to serve as a high-performance pathway for the USA Eagles — a model that has already proven successful internationally. World Rugby’s investment mirrors what Fiji implemented with the Drua franchise, which propelled Fiji to the 2023 Rugby World Cup quarterfinals. The ambition for Anthem is no less significant: to accelerate the development of American players and give the Eagles their best chance of competing on the world stage.

A career built for this moment

Carney’s path to leading this project reads like a tour of American rugby’s entire development pyramid. Born and raised in England, he attended Sedbergh, one of the country’s most storied rugby schools, where he watched future internationals like James Simpson-Daniel and Phil Dowson run out for the first XV. After relocating to the United States at sixteen, he earned a bachelor’s degree in sport management from Salem State, an MBA from Florida Atlantic, and cut his teeth at USA Rugby’s headquarters in Boulder, Colorado, where he helped develop a multi-million-dollar proposal to reinstate rugby in the Olympics.

A stint as executive director of Rugby NorCal followed — leading the country’s largest state-based youth rugby organization, serving more than five thousand players, coaches, referees, and administrators. From there, roles with Rugby ATL and RFC LA brought him into professional team management. He remains the only MLR GM to have physically relocated a franchise, moving the Atlanta operation to Los Angeles.

“I had this vision when I was a young guy of being this big-time sports agent,” Carney says. “My journey has evolved. Finding myself as a general manager of a professional sports franchise at thirty-eight — I can really be proud of that. But I just want to be a servant of the game. I want to try and help take the sport of rugby in the United States to the next level.”

That servant mentality is what drew him back to rugby after a brief step away following the LA chapter. “I thought rugby was kind of done with me,” he admits. “And then a few months later, Scott called me up and asked if I would come take over as GM for Anthem.”

Measuring success beyond the scoreboard

While the win column has yet to reflect Anthem’s progress, the development metrics tell a compelling story — one that goes directly to the heart of why this franchise exists.

In 2025, Anthem led the league with eighty-six percent of playing minutes going to U.S.-qualified players — more than any other MLR team. Thirteen players made their MLR debut wearing an Anthem jersey, also a league high. And on March 30 in Seattle, Anthem became the first team in MLR history to field an entirely U.S.-qualified 23-man roster — a milestone that captured the essence of the franchise’s mission.

Six Anthem players earned USA Eagles summer squad selections that year, the most from any MLR team. Junior Gafa won the 2024 MLR Rookie of the Year award. And the team pushed several opponents to the wire last season, including Houston, who went on to contest the MLR final.

“Everyone last season started to respect us a little bit more,” Carney says. “They saw what we were building, and we were no longer taken for granted.”

These are not consolation prizes. They are proof of concept — evidence that a franchise designed to develop American rugby talent is doing exactly that.

A roster built to compete and develop

For 2026, the recruitment philosophy is what Carney describes as a hybrid model — targeting players who are consistent in their positional fundamentals but versatile enough to adapt week to week. He cites Tom Pittman, equally capable at flyhalf or as a distributing inside centre, as emblematic of this approach.

“Rugby is a very tactical game — it’s a chess match,” Carney explains. “Depending on the matchup and the anticipated roster we’ll face, that will determine who we start, who we have on the bench, and who we sit. The beauty of this squad is it gives us the versatility to throw the ball around, or play more direct, or play a tactical kicking game.”

The select international players Anthem has recruited are chosen not for name recognition but for the mentorship and leadership they bring. Trainor, with years of NPC and Super Rugby experience, will be an invaluable resource for the squad’s young backs. Hooker Ramiro Gurovich fills the same role for developing front-rowers Seth Smith and Campbell Rob.

“Jordan is going to be an amazing mentor for Julian Roberts, for Erich Storti, for EJ Freeman, for any of the young backs we have,” Carney explains. “As leaders, guys like Jordan and Ramiro can help translate the pictures we show the guys in previews and reviews into actionable items on the field for the younger players we have. It’s the little nuances that only experience at a higher level can give you that will help these promising rookies develop.”

Building toward 2031

Carney’s vision extends well beyond the 2026 season. With the Rugby World Cup set to be hosted on American soil in 2031, the window for development is both urgent and exciting. He points to Italy’s recent resurgence — their U20s graduates now demolishing the scrums of established Six Nations opponents at senior level — as a model America can aspire to follow.

“Italy are going to compete for quarterfinals, semi-finals in the World Cup next year,” Carney says. “They’re doing it with fewer resources than England or France or Ireland, and they’re doing it better than virtually anyone else in the world right now. That is a case in point in what it looks like to really develop players with a five-to-ten-year plan.”

For Anthem, the work starts locally. The club’s community engagement programs are already embedded in Charlotte schools, with a waitlist for equipment from schools eager to introduce rugby to their students. The ambition is to make Charlotte not just a home for professional rugby, but a destination for international matches and a hub for the sport’s growth across the Carolinas.

“We need to show results this season,” Carney says. “We need to build confidence in World Rugby and USA Rugby to keep this thing going. Success on the field and success off the field — in terms of our marketing, our branding, how we engage the community and build that fan base in Charlotte — is of the highest importance.”

Carney believes the pieces are now in place: a roster with genuine depth and experience, a coaching staff led by Agustín Cavalieri, a commercial operation growing under Team President Patrick Stack, and a mission that resonates with every stakeholder from World Rugby’s executive board to the families turning up at American Legion Memorial Stadium on Saturday afternoons.

“We’re going to play a fun and physical, American brand of rugby,” he says. “And what that looks like — the fans are going to have to come and watch!”