Etienne Fourcade

Clermont paid Grenoble around €370,000 in training compensation and contract buyout to get Étienne Fourcade a year before his deal ran out. Hookers who can throw straight and scrummage are not cheap, and Grenoble knew what they had.

He is 1.80m and 103kg, and he has been Clermont‘s first-choice No. 2 for most of the time since he arrived.

Fourcade was born in Lons-le-Saunier and started playing at six, at the Club Sportif Lons Jura. The club went into liquidation in 2009. He carried on in the same town with the Cercle Sportif Lédonien, which had just been set up to replace it.

Grenoble developed him. They won the 2018 promotion play-off 47-22 against Oyonnax with Fourcade in the front row, and by the 2018-19 Top 14 season the shirt was his. That was when the bigger French clubs started calling. He signed for Clermont on 7 February 2020, to start the following season, and took the starting job in Auvergne immediately.

The international recognition came and then stopped. Fabien Galthié took him on France’s summer tour to Australia at the end of that first Clermont season. He did not get on the pitch. Gaëtan Barlot and Anthony Étrillard were ahead of him, and the call has not come again.

What he has won is from the Grenoble years: a Pro D2 runners-up medal in 2018, the promotion play-off the same season, and a losing final in 2019.

He signed an extension in April 2023 that runs to 2026, so this is the last season on the current deal.

Set-piece hooker, not a ball-carrying one. Watch the lineout. Clermont’s maul is built on his throw, and when that wobbles the whole platform goes with it.