Antoine Tichit

Antoine Tichit retires at the end of the 2025-26 season. He is still listed in Castres‘s squad data. This profile is a record of a career rather than a preview of one he will not play.

A loosehead prop, 1.87m and 115kg, born in Rouen on 13 June 1989, and a No. 8 to begin with.

He was developed at Union Athlétique Gaillacoise in the Tarn and left when the club went bankrupt, signing for Albi. In 2008 he joined Oyonnax, coached by a former Castres hooker named Christophe Urios, and spent six seasons under him. He won Pro D2 there in 2013 and played 48 Top 14 matches in his last two seasons, 28 of them starts, as Oyonnax reached the play-offs in 2014-15. Rugbyrama named him the best loosehead in the division that year, having given him the same award in Pro D2 two years earlier.

He then followed Urios to Castres. An injury restricted him to twelve league starts in 2015-16, and he was essential from the season after: twenty-five appearances, then twenty-six starts in the twenty-seven matches he played in 2017-18, and a French championship won in the final against Montpellier.

The French Barbarians picked him three times. Argentina in 2015, the Māori All Blacks at Bordeaux in 2017 in a 19-15 win, and a 2018 tour of New Zealand under Urios again, where he started against the Crusaders and came off the bench against the Highlanders.

Castres lost the 2022 final with him in the front row, and extended his contract twice in his mid-thirties, in January and November 2023.

Eighteen seasons, one championship, two divisional player-of-the-year awards, and a career spent largely in the service of one coach.