Hugo Parrou

Hugo Parrou came on against Montpellier in January 2024 for his first taste of top-flight rugby and played the last half-hour of it with a torn calf. He had felt something in the warm-up and gone on anyway. The tear was diagnosed after the final whistle.

Loosehead prop at Pau, 1.83m and 110kg, and 23 years old.

Tarbes is his home town. He started at Bazet Andrest in 2008 and moved to the Stado in the minimes grade, before following Clément Mondinat to Pau in 2021. He was brought up as a hooker and converted to loosehead, and came through an academy intake that also produced four of the 2023 junior world champions.

His chance came because the front row ahead of him kept breaking down. He was called into the professional group in January 2024 and, after the calf, came back in March at the Stade Ernest-Wallon to steady the scrum against Toulouse.

Seven league matches and one in Europe was enough for a contract extension. Then, in September 2024, he came off injured against Bayonne, had a shoulder operation in October and did not rejoin the squad until late March, six months later.

France picked him for an under-20 camp in January 2023, with seven other Pau players, and started him against Italy. He was not called again.

He studies at the ESC Pau business school and fishes for carp and trout with his brother Lucas, a former back-rower whose career was ended by a brachial plexus injury. Two seasons into a Top 14 career, most of them spent recovering.