Gael Fickou

Gaël Fickou played for France at eighteen, on 16 March 2013, three months after his first full season as a professional. He was voted the revelation of the year in French rugby in the same period. He has been an international ever since.

Note on his current club: Fickou is still listed in Racing 92‘s squad data. He returned to RC Toulon, the club that trained him, for the 2026-27 season.

Centre, 1.90m and 99kg, and 32 years old.

Born in La Seyne-sur-Mer to a Senegalese father, he was a footballer first and came close to joining the academies at Monaco and Sochaux. Rugby started at US Seynoise in 2003 and took him to the sport-study centre at Hyères and then to Toulon.

He left in 2012 because the midfield ahead of him held Matt Giteau, Maxime Mermoz and Mathieu Bastareaud, and chose Toulouse. The first season there was extraordinary for a teenager on an academy contract: twenty-six matches, twenty starts, a try in a play-off win over Racing 92 alongside Yannick Jauzion, and a semi-final against the club he had just left.

The best club season came in 2015-16, after a World Cup in which he started once. He scored a hat-trick against Grenoble, the only try of a play-off defeat by Racing, and finished with twelve tries, the leading total at his club and the fourth-highest in the Top 14.

Three years at Stade Français followed and then five at Racing, where he arrived in April 2021 under a transfer rule change while still partly paid by the club he was leaving. He started at centre through the 2022 Grand Slam.