Dany Priso

Dany Priso came to France from Cameroon at eleven, with his mother, and they settled in Ussel in the Corrèze. He took French nationality in December 2012, a fortnight before his nineteenth birthday, and played his first Test five years after that.

Loosehead prop at Toulon, 1.82m and 112kg, and 32 years old.

The local club, Union Sportive Usselloise, gave him the game. Stade Français took him through to 2016, when La Rochelle signed him on two years.

Six seasons on the Atlantic coast produced the best of his club career: a Challenge Cup final in 2019, a European Cup final and a French championship final in 2021, and the European Cup itself in 2022. He left that March, once Thierry Paiva had arrived and Reda Wardi had extended, and signed three years on the Mediterranean.

The return was immediate. He started the 2023 Challenge Cup final in a front row with Teddy Baubigny and Beka Gigashvili and beat Glasgow 43-19.

Jacques Brunel capped him against Ireland on 3 February 2018 and he has been a regular bench forward for France since, with eighteen caps and three starts. He was named in the original 31 for the 2019 World Cup and cut for Cyril Baille, called up for the 2023 Six Nations and replaced before the first round, and recalled in February 2024 when Reda Wardi withdrew.

Eight years as an international without ever becoming the first choice is an unusual career shape, and a reasonably common one for a French loosehead in an era that has produced Baille, Wardi and Jean-Baptiste Gros at the same time.

A powerful, low scrummager and one of the more durable front-row forwards in the Top 14.