Beka Shvangiradze

Beka Shvangiradze started the 2022 French espoirs final at No. 8 and Aurillac beat Toulouse 37-26. He was nineteen and had made his professional debut two months earlier.

Back-row forward at Lyon, 1.91m and 104kg, born on 12 June 2002.

He played in Georgia for RC Aia until 2020, when he joined the Aurillac academy. His first senior match came on 15 April 2022, on at half-time against Carcassonne in Pro D2.

That summer was the busiest of his career. He played his first Georgia Under-20 match against Italy on 25 June, scored his first international try against Wales five days later, scored twice against Scotland on 6 July, and won his first senior cap ten days after that, replacing Mikheil Babunashvili against Portugal with eleven minutes left.

Then the cards. He started the following Pro D2 season and was shown a yellow and then a red in the second round against Provence. In October 2023 he was sent off against Nevers and banned for five weeks. In his second match back, against Montauban, he was sent off again for head contact in a high tackle and banned for four more.

Between the suspensions he scored: a first Pro D2 try against Massy in September 2022, three in the first half of that season, and 33 matches and nine tries across three years at Aurillac.

Georgia have capped him and he won the European Championship in 2024 and 2025, playing against Germany and the Netherlands in the first of them.

Lyon agreed terms in February 2024 and gave him four years. He joins Beka Saghinadze in the same back row.

Four years for a 21-year-old with that disciplinary record is a bet on the player learning where the line is.