Émilien Gailleton

Émilien Gailleton scored fourteen tries in twenty-four matches in his first season in the French top flight, more than anyone else in the competition. He was nineteen. In February 2025 he became the youngest player to reach twenty-five tries in it.

He plays centre for Pau, is 1.85m and 89kg, and is 23.

Croydon is where he was born, to a French father and a British mother, and the Lot is where he grew up from the age of three. Athletics came first and rugby at Cahors in 2008, and Agen took him as a junior in 2017.

The under-18 side took him to South Africa in 2019 and the under-20s picked him for a Six Nations at seventeen. He captained that side the following year, starting all five matches.

Clermont and Stade Toulousain both wanted him. He chose Pau in December 2021, largely because Sébastien Piqueronies was there, having run the France junior pathway at Marcoussis.

The first cap came in a World Cup warm-up against Scotland in August 2023. He scored his first international try in Argentina the following June and his second against Japan that November, having started the match.

His club made him captain at twenty-one, against Stade Toulousain at the Stade du Hameau, and he has held the armband several times since.

The second season was less spectacular and more complete: eighteen line breaks in twenty-four matches rather than fourteen tries. He is the most valuable player his club has produced in a generation, and the one the rest of the Top 14 has been trying to buy since he was twenty.