Esteban Abadie

Fifty consecutive Top 14 matches across two clubs, every game either of them played, between October 2021 and November 2023.

Esteban Abadie played fifty Top 14 matches in a row between October 2021 and November 2023. Every match Brive played in that time, then every match Toulon played. Nothing about back-row rugby makes that easy.

Flanker at Toulon, 1.88m and 100kg, and 28 years old.

The family has been at this for four generations. His father Geofrey won French championships with Stade Français and Racing in 1990 and 1998, his grandfather Alain hooked for Graulhet, and his great-uncle André was capped by France.

Racing took him into their youth sides at twelve and gave him thirteen minutes of senior rugby, against Stade Toulousain in April 2018. He took a master’s in commerce and management at Grenoble École de Management in parallel.

Brive is where the career started properly. Nineteen matches in 2021-22, then all twenty-six rounds of the following season with only one appearance off the bench, then relegation, which set him free.

He arrived on the coast for 2023-24 and was a starter immediately, player of the month in the Top 14 that December and in the league’s team of the season by May. Fabien Galthié named him in the 34 for the 2024 Six Nations and capped him against Italy on 25 February. He has two caps.

The fifty-match run is worth dwelling on because of what it says about selection rather than fitness. Two different coaching staffs, at two clubs in two divisions, reached the same conclusion about him every week for two years.

A relentless, unspectacular openside whose value is in never being unavailable, which is a rarer quality than it sounds.