Bastien Chalureau

Injuries nearly cost him a leg at 22 and a court case cost him his place at Toulouse. He was a French champion by 30.

Bastien Chalureau spent two years in his early twenties not knowing whether he would play again, and the medical problem at one stage was whether he would keep the leg. He was a French champion at 30 and a France international a few months after that.

Lock at Montpellier, 2.02m and 118kg, and 34 years old.

Mondavezan in the Haute-Garonne is where he started, at five and a half, and he stayed at US Cazères until seventeen before Stade Toulousain took him in 2009. France picked him at under-18 and under-20 level, and the junior world championship of 2012 lasted him two minutes: he ruptured the ligaments in his right knee against Argentina and the run of injuries began there.

Perpignan gave him a professional career in 2014, and a debut in September 2015 after the wilderness years. Fourteen league matches came in the first season and thirteen in the next, then he was released. Nevers, newly promoted, took him for two seasons in the second division.

Stade Toulousain brought him home in 2019 on a two-year deal. He played once. In February 2020 the club suspended him following a street fight that January, and the case went to court. He was convicted at first instance of a racially aggravated assault on two men, one of them the former player Yannick Larguet, and given a six-month suspended sentence. He appealed. On 16 January 2024 the appeal court upheld a conviction for assault and the same suspended sentence, but did not retain the racial aggravation.

Montpellier took him on loan while all of that was unresolved and he stayed. A Challenge Cup came in 2021, then the Top 14 title on 24 June 2022, when he started at lock in the win over Castres and was among the best players on the field. A first France cap came that November against South Africa in Marseille, and there have been seven in all.