Facundo Gattas Re-Signed for 2025

By Alistair Kirsch-Poole
Dec 18, 2024 - 2:30pm

Old Glory has announced the return of hooker Facundo Gattas for the 2025 season. The 29-year-old Uruguayan international began playing rugby at the age of 10 and was quickly involved with Uruguay's age grade programs, playing in the Junior World Trophy in 2014 and 2015. He then became a regular feature of the Uruguay senior side starting in 2016, earning over 40 international caps.

He joined Hindu in Argentina's URBA Top 14 in 2018, where he continues to play in the MLR offseason. In 2021, he got his first professional contract playing for Penarol in SLAR. In 2022, he joined Old Glory part way through the season, but was promptly injured after just two matches and forced to sit the rest of the season out. When he returned in 2023, he struggled to break into the OGDc squad, playing in 15 matches but starting none of them, for a total of just 284 minutes played. In 2024, though, he was entrusted with a larger role, playing in 11 matches with 8 starts for a total of 552 minutes played.

With the entire cast of hookers from last season returning next season, we now have a pretty clear idea of how the depth chart will break down. In 2024, Gattas split the starting hooker spot pretty much evenly with Martin Vaca, with young American KoiKoi Nelligan the man on the bench regardless of who was starting. In 2025, I think we can expect a similar pattern of only one of Vaca or Gattas on the pitch at a time in order to preserve foreign player slots. The real question, then, is whether Nelligan will be able to push either Gattas or Vaca to the bench.