Baptiste Cope

A concussion ended one season and a ruptured biceps took four months out of the next.

Baptiste Cope was concussed against Lyon in March 2024 and missed the rest of the season. He ruptured a biceps that November and lost four more months.

Flanker at Castres, 1.86m and 102kg, born on 9 February 2002.

He did not start playing until he was eleven, at Sor Agout, the club run jointly by the villages of Saix and Soual. Three years later Castres took him as a cadet. Baptiste Delaporte came through the same village club a few years ahead of him.

His first professional appearance came on 18 December 2020, in the Challenge Cup against Newcastle, on for Stéphane Onambele with nine minutes left. He was eighteen, and then waited two full years for the next one.

It came on 17 December 2022 in the Champions Cup against Edinburgh, and his Top 14 debut followed six days later against Toulouse, where he replaced Delaporte with ten minutes to go. Castres extended him to 2026 at the end of that season.

Then the two injuries, back to back, in the two seasons when he should have been establishing himself. A concussion and a ruptured biceps are unrelated problems, which is its own kind of bad luck: neither is a recurring weakness, and together they still cost him the best part of two years.

His honours list is empty and his appearance list is thin, and neither is really a verdict on the player. He is 24, out of contract at the end of this season, and needs a run of matches more than anything else. Whether Castres give him one is the only question on this page.