Florent Vanverberghe

Florent Vanverberghe played three professional matches in two seasons at Toulon, the club he had been at since he was six. He left for Castres in 2020 and was a first-choice second row within two years.

He is 1.98m and 120kg and was born in La Seyne-sur-Mer.

Toulon’s rugby school took him at six and used him at lock and No. 8. France picked him at Under-17 and then Under-19 level, and he took a science baccalauréat in 2018. His professional debut came on 14 October 2018 in the European Cup against Newcastle. He played twice more that season and not at all the next.

In between he won a World Cup. He played four of France’s five matches at the 2019 Under-20 championship, starting the semi-final and the final, and France beat Australia to win it. He also won the espoirs championship with Toulon that year.

Castres took him in May 2020. By 2022-23 he was the established starter alongside Ryan Staniforth, and he was a losing Top 14 finalist in 2022.

In October 2019 he was one of thirteen players sanctioned by the Ligue Nationale de Rugby for breaching the regulations on sports betting, which prohibit participants from betting on their own competitions.

France took him to Argentina in the summer of 2024 and played him against Uruguay in a fixture that carried no caps on 10 July. He is still uncapped.

A lineout forward who needed to leave a big club to have a career, which is a more common story than the Toulon academy would like.