Baptiste Germain

Two French championships with Toulouse while spending four years behind Antoine Dupont. Cheslin Kolbe once said the similarities were obvious.

Baptiste Germain spent four years at Toulouse behind Antoine Dupont. He won two French championships in that time, in 2021 and 2024, which is what happens when you are the understudy at the best club in Europe.

Note on his current club: Germain is still listed in Bayonne‘s squad data. He has joined ASM Clermont Auvergne.

He is a scrum-half, 1.74m and 82kg, born in Bordeaux.

He started in 2007 after a tournament at his primary school in Sainte-Marie, joining Saint-André-de-Cubzac and then moving to CA Bordeaux-Bègles two years later with his father Francis, a former player who came in to coach the club’s juniors. He was at the Talence pôle espoirs from September 2014 and took a science baccalauréat, then an international business degree alongside playing.

Bordeaux-Bègles gave him an academy contract at eighteen after he had captained their cadets to national titles, and a professional debut on 14 December 2019 against Agen in the Challenge Cup. Toulouse took him in the summer of 2020, into a depth chart behind Dupont, Alexi Balès and Théo Idjellidaine.

France picked him at Under-18 level — a European title in 2017 at fifteens, another at sevens in 2018, and an Olympic Youth Games silver in Argentina where the French lost only the final. He first played Under-20s in 2020 against Scotland, and was kept out of the World Cup-winning squad by Léo Coly and Quentin Delord.

He is an attacking nine: quick to the line, good vision, a proper kicking game, and he tackles. Cheslin Kolbe, his teammate at Toulouse, said the comparison with Dupont was fair and that the vision and the boot were already there.