Facundo Bosch

Facundo Bosch’s first start for an Argentine representative side ended in the 70th minute with a red card, for fighting the Georgia prop Giorgi Mtchedlishvili at the 2014 Tbilisi Cup. Argentina won the tournament anyway.

Hooker at Bayonne, 1.80m and 100kg, and he has a European Cup winner’s medal.

Born in Necochea, he played semi-professionally from 2011 for Club Universitario de Buenos Aires, making 33 appearances and winning three consecutive URBA championships between 2013 and 2015.

The international career took four years to start properly. He was called up in 2016 for the Americas Rugby Championship and withdrew after getting injured in training two days before the opening match. He was in senior squads for Tests against France and Italy without playing. The first cap finally came against South Africa in the 2018 Rugby Championship, on 25 August, when he was 27.

He moved to France in 2017 with Agen, then to La Rochelle in 2019. That is where the medals are: a losing European final and a losing Top 14 final in 2021, then the Champions Cup in 2022.

Bayonne took him that summer. He took the starting shirt almost immediately and they extended him three years in February 2023.

A short, thickset hooker who scrummages low and has spent his whole career in packs that go forward. He is one of three players born in 1991 in this squad, alongside Gareth Anscombe and Manu Tuilagi. At 35 the throw is what keeps him in the side, and it has not started wobbling yet.