Giorgi Melikidze

He arrived in Paris at eighteen, played in the Top 14 at nineteen, and has been at the same club for eleven seasons.

Giorgi Melikidze joined Stade Français in the summer of 2015, straight out of a Georgia Under-20 side he had just won a World Trophy with. He was eighteen. He made his Top 14 debut against Toulon that September, at nineteen, and he has not played for another club since.

Prop at Stade Français, 1.80m and 116kg, and 30 years old.

Aspindza, in the south of Georgia near the Turkish border, is where he was born. Georgia capped him on 6 February 2016, against Germany, five months after that first appearance in Paris and while he was still nineteen.

What has followed is the run that defines a Georgian forward of his generation. European champions in 2016, in 2018, in 2019, in 2020 and again in 2021 — five titles in six years, over a period in which the side went from a curiosity to a team nobody in the second tier could beat. Georgia reached the final again in 2026 and lost it.

A tight-head arriving in the French top flight at eighteen almost never survives it. The position is the one where physical maturity matters most and where a club has every incentive to buy a finished article from somewhere else rather than wait four years for one.

The five titles came in an era when Georgia were pressing hardest for a place in an expanded Six Nations, and a prop holding down a Top 14 shirt in Paris was part of the argument they were making.

He is 1.80m and 116kg, which is short and heavy, the classic shape for the scrum rather than for the loose. Eleven seasons at one Top 14 club and a full international career running alongside it is a career most props in the division would take.