Baptiste Serin

Baptiste Serin was born into it. One great-grandfather played in the forwards, both grandfathers played, one on the wing and one at scrum-half, and his father Philippe was a back-rower at Dax. In 2016 he hired Dimitri Yachvili privately to work on his kicking, which is not a normal thing for a 22-year-old to do.

Scrum-half at Toulon, 1.82m and 83kg, and 32 years old.

Parentis-en-Born had him for twelve seasons from the age of five. Bordeaux-Bègles took him into their junior sides in 2009 and gave him a first professional match in October 2012, against London Irish, in a heavy home defeat.

The France under-20s used him as a goal-kicker as much as a nine. He scored 44 points in the 2014 Grand Slam campaign and 22 at the junior world championship the year before.

Heini Adams’s knee injury gave him the Bordeaux shirt in 2015-16, and an injury to Pierre Bernard gave him the kicking tee with it. Ninety-four points and sixteen starts later he was voted the best scrum-half in the league.

Guy Novès took him to Argentina in June 2016 and he kept the shirt: a penalty, a break down the touchline to send Hugo Bonneval over, the conversion, and a 27-0 win in the second Test. In 2017 he and Camille Lopez started all five Six Nations matches together, the first time France had kept one half-back pairing for a whole tournament since 2010.

He signed for Toulon in November 2018, effective from 2019, and won the Challenge Cup with them in 2023. A Top 14 career of more than a decade and a Six Nations winner’s medal in 2026.