Guillaume Marchand

He was replaced by his own brother on his professional debut, thirty-four minutes into it.

Guillaume Marchand played his first match for Toulouse against Montpellier in September 2018 and was replaced after 34 minutes by his older brother Julien, who is also a hooker and a France international.

Hooker at Lyon, 1.83m and 105kg, born in Saint-Gaudens on 5 June 1998 and from Loures-Barousse.

He played football first, with Julien, and only started rugby at thirteen at US Montréjeau Gourdan-Polignan. He began at No. 8, moved to centre, and joined Toulouse at fifteen in 2013, where they made him a hooker. He took a business diploma alongside it, entered the academy in 2017 and signed professionally in September 2018.

His career at Toulouse was built out of other people’s injuries and absences. Long lay-offs for Julien and Leonardo Ghiraldini gave him fourteen matches in his first season, including the Top 14 final against Clermont, where he came on for Peato Mauvaka in a 24-18 win. The following year he was briefly the only fit hooker besides Mauvaka and played fourteen league matches before the pandemic stopped play.

By 2020-21 he was third choice behind Julien and Mauvaka and played mostly during international windows. Julien was suspended for the European Cup final, so Guillaume made the matchday squad and came on with ten minutes left as Toulouse beat La Rochelle 22-17 for a fifth title. They won the Top 14 final too, though he did not play in it.

France Under-20s took him to the 2018 Six Nations, which they won, and the junior world championship, which they also won.

Lyon signed him in 2021 and he won the Challenge Cup with them the following year, then lost the 2025 final.

Starting late and standing behind a brother picked for France is a difficult apprenticeship. He came out of it with a European Cup medal and a first-choice shirt somewhere else, which most players in that position never get.