Charlie Cassang

Charlie Cassang scored the first try of the 2023 Pro D2 final and Oyonnax won it 14-3. Two of the Grenoble players he beat that afternoon, Irakli Aptsiauri and Mathis Sarragallet, are now in the same dressing room as him at Lyon.

He is a scrum-half, 1.73m and 92kg, born on 8 February 1995. Baptiste Couilloud, the France international in front of him, is three centimetres taller and ten kilos lighter. Nines are not usually built like Cassang.

He learned the position at the Entente des 4 Cantons and arrived at Agen as a first-year cadet, then finished his training at Clermont, studying at the ESC Clermont Business School alongside it.

France selected him at Under-19 and Under-20 level without ever giving him an official match.

Clermont handed him his debut on 11 April 2015, against Oyonnax. They loaned him to Bayonne for a year, and he signed his first professional contract on his return, for 2016-17. He was in the squad that won the Top 14 in 2017, though he did not play the final.

Oyonnax signed him in 2020 on two years and extended him to 2025 in early 2022. In 2022-23 he was their first-choice nine and one of the leaders of the side, playing 21 matches, starting 19 and scoring seven tries. Oyonnax finished top of the regular season and went up.

Lyon brought him back to the top flight in 2024.

A heavy, physical scrum-half who has won a French championship and a second-division title and has spent most of his career as the man who plays when the international does not. It is a specific job and he has done it at three clubs, which is its own kind of career.