Geoffrey Palis

Geoffrey Palis played football for eight years before he touched a rugby ball. His father Jean-Marc had started at the same club, Gaillac, and gone on to play first-division rugby at No. 8 for Albi.

Full-back at Castres, 1.88m and 96kg, born in Albi on 8 July 1991.

Albi took him as a junior. He was a wing with a good boot and the coaches moved him to fifteen. He played the 2011 Under-20 Six Nations, scoring twice in four matches, then the junior world championship, where he scored fifteen points in five games from two tries, a penalty and a drop goal.

Castres signed him in 2013, as reigning French champions, to understudy Brice Dulin and replace the retiring Romain Teulet. He deputised through the autumn internationals and kicked heavily. His first season brought 103 points from sixteen league matches, and a losing Top 14 final against Toulon.

Then came three years of being nearly picked. France called him up in January 2014 and released him to his club, twice. Philippe Saint-André put him in a 74-man World Cup group in September. Guy Novès selected him for the 2016 Argentina tour and he withdrew injured before the first match, having had adductor surgery that January. Novès recalled him in January 2017.

The cap finally came on 3 February 2018, against Ireland, in Jacques Brunel’s first match in charge. He was 26.

He won the championship with Castres that season and a runner-up again in 2022, and has two Challenge Armand Vaquerin titles with the club, in 2016 and 2019. The French Barbarians took him to Argentina, where he started the second test.

A goal-kicking full-back who has spent thirteen seasons at one club and most of a decade being the next man in the France squad.