At the Crossroads: The Case For and Against Simon Cross

By Alistair Kirsch-Poole
Jun 20, 2026 - 1:30pm

It's no secret that Old Glory DC head coach Simon Cross is on the hot seat. As this season has progressed, it has gone from an occasional idle thought to serious conversation among fans, and those questions mirror very real discussions happening inside the OGDC organization.

When people have posed the question to me, I've end up arguing both sides of it, because it's not an easy one to answer. There are a lot of considerations, both obvious subtle, objective and emotional.

So in this article, I've decided to lay it all out: all the reasons that Simon is in the cross-hairs, and all the reasons to keep him around anyway. In the interest of giving the fans the fullest picture possible for fans, I'm going to make this very frank. I won't be beating around the bush with any weasel-words or shying away from things I know from behind the scenes, even if no one would admit them.

The case against Simon Cross

It's really not hard to make the case against Simon Cross. He has just wrapped up his third season in charge, and the lack of progress in the team's record is stark: a dead-even 7-2-7 in 2024, another dead-even 8-8 season in 2025, followed up by a losing season this year of just 4-6. Overall, including the playoffs, Old Glory has won just 42% of matches during his tenure.

The post season results have trended in the wrong direction as well, with a narrow 29-33 loss to New England in 2024, then a double-digit 16-27 loss to Chicago in 2025, followed by the blowout 22-59 loss to Chicago this season.

The charge, then, is a lack of progress. Sure, the team under Cross has never been bad - there are a lot worse places to be than consistently breaking even. Just hop in a time machine and ask me in 2022 how I'd feel with a team that can consistently push even the best teams in the league, I'd have taken it in a heartbeat.

However, it's in a fan's nature to ask for more. Are we content, as a fan-base, to forever float in a mild purgatory, always good enough to slip into the playoffs but never on anyone's mind as a contender? Are we okay with a team that never has a terrible season, but also never hosts a playoff match, much less lifts the Shield? Isn't striving to win the whole damn thing the entire point?

It's a genuine question, and an even more serious one for those with money at stake. It's definitely harder to sell new fans on a team that seems permanently stuck in third gear, unable to truly catch up with the top teams in the league. At what point does there need to be progress, not just as a matter of vanity but of survival?

The very real case to be made against coach Cross boils down to this: if things haven't gotten better in the last three years, will they ever? And if they don't, are we willing to accept what that means for the team?

The case for Simon Cross

With the case against him so painfully obvious, Simon's defense will be rooted in his personal strengths, the specific nuances of the last three seasons, and the overarching structural challenges that make Old Glory a harder job than it seems.

To start with, let's look at that personal side. It's undeniable that Simon Cross the most easily likable head coach Old Glory has had, and possible ever in the league. If you had to pick a head coach to be your neighbor, he'd be at the top of the list.

That charisma matters in tangible ways, too. His openness with fans and the media, this site included, helps pull people in and make them want to support this team. It also gives him a persuasiveness that means that, in the off-season, it genuinely feels like this team has a chance at righting the ship and winning it all next year. Hope is arguably the most important thing a fan-base can have, and he does a good job of instilling it.

His likability extends to the way the team plays on the field. While people do like impressive tries and high-octane attack, there's something comforting about the workmanlike approach that Simon Cross brings. A team that's trying to win by building off the basics, working hard, and maintaining their discipline is way easier to root for than one that has a bad attitude or plays dirty.

It also plays a part in the way he's been able to affect the rugby community in the greater DC area. The amount of work he has put in every off-season in growing the game is undeniable, whether that's by going into local high school football teams to show them proper tackling technique, giving his time and advice to local rugby coaches, or the extensive academy system with bases all over the region. The man has put in the work, there can be no question about that.

His commitment to growing the game extends to the team as well. He has always centered American talent and has demonstrated a clear desire to win with domestic players. Through the last three seasons, Old Glory has been one of the more American-heavy teams in its composition and contributed as much as any team outside of Anthem to the Eagles. John Rizzo is perhaps the poster child of this in the Cross era, a young American trusted even with the likes of Axel Muller on the team, who now has a chance to break into the national team roster. Again, trying to do things the right way makes this team easy to cheer for.

His energy for growing the game probably isn't new information for anyone reading this, but it's still well worth mentioning because it's easy to take for granted. His approach and his passion for rugby in this region and in the country is exceptional, and it's absolutely not something that is guaranteed to be replicated by an potential successor. If you want to replace Simon Cross as head of Old Glory, you either need to find someone who can match his energy or risk losing some of the best things this team has done in the last several years.

Then there is the more direct defense, one that attacks the very idea that he's done a mediocre job. The core of this defense rests of the idea that, while the results haven't been what we want, there are reasons to suspect that it would have been harder to do much better. Those reasons are likely stronger and more varied than you realize.

The first and most obvious point might be to address the way the 2026 season played out, and the aspects of that which fell outside of Simon's control. The off-season saw a roster construction that began methodically, with a clear vision for how all the pieces would fit together, and ended chaotically, as key players left unexpected or retired. That left multiple areas of weakness, some of which turned out alright and some of which were problems throughout the season. Despite it being year three, he still hasn't actually been able construct the roster he wants.

The reasons for this also go deeper than just some bad luck. One of the overriding issues for years in the league has been the rampant salary cap violations. The issues were realy kicked off by Adam Gilchrist in 2021 with the Giltinis, who dominated the league that season by spending a boatload of money to stack the team with talent. Other teams quickly started playing the same game, which drove a significant improvement in the quality of play but also pushed the budgets of teams well beyond sustainability and quite literally nearly sank the whole MLR.

Old Glory was never one of the teams playing that game. It's not a coincidence that the decline from a 4-1 inaugural season began in 2021 and hit its depths a year later. While other owners ramped up spending to stay competitive, Old Glory got left behind in those years. Quality coaching under Josh Syms and Simon Cross brought them back to a reasonable level, but there is a limit to how high you can rise when you are being significantly outspent by your opponents.

Pulling back from those unsustainable levels of spending was supposed to be one of the focuses of the off-season, with rules agreed to lower the salary cap and dramatically reduce the loopholes that provided the avenues for overspending. However, multiple sources from multiple teams have said that those rules are not being followed, and that breaches of the spirit of the salary cap are still very much a fact of life in MLR.

With respect to Simon Cross, then, it's not so much a question of whether he is doing a good job, but whether anyone else could do a better job. There hasn't been a winning season at OGDC since 2020 was canceled after just 5 matches, and no coach has managed a career record over .500 while here. Maybe we could bring in a new coach who would get the team to a new level, but it's just as likely that the new coach would struggle given if the structural limitations don't change.

None of this should be taken as a criticism of the owners, either. I fully support the idea that Old Glory should be following the salary cap rules, and I wouldn't want to see the team pulled into the same level of unsustainability that we just saw bring the end of teams like NOLA and Houston. This is an issue for the league as a whole to sort out, and until they do, there might just be a ceiling for teams playing the game honestly. Importantly for this discussion, replacing Simon Cross doesn't change any of that.

In short, then, the defense of Simon Cross is this: he is a great person who is liked by everyone, his work in the community and growing the game would be difficult to replace, and given the structural issues in the league that remain despite last off-season's reforms it would be tough for any new coach to do much better anyway.

At the Crossroads

So should he be replaced as head coach? Fortunately, it's the owners that have to decide that, and they will do so with the added benefit of insight into the organization that we don't have from the outside. I'm glad it's not on me to have to chart the path forward.

I think both options are open to them, though. While I have heard fans start asking questions and no one would be shocked by his departure at this stage, I haven't heard anyone calling for his head. The fans genuinely like him and no one is eager to see him leave, so giving him another year is unlikely to face objections. Both are viable options, so it just remains for us to wait see what the owners decide.