Jack Maddocks

Jack Maddocks lost the whole of his first season in France to a calcified haematoma in his thigh, a rare condition that is difficult to treat. It is the same injury that ended his father’s playing career.

Full-back, wing or fly-half at Pau, 1.94m and 100kg, and 29 years old.

He was rated as a cricketer as well as a rugby player in Sydney and chose this one, starting at Eastern Suburbs in 2015. The Melbourne Rebels signed him in 2016 and got the best of him: nine tries in fifteen matches in 2018, including the first hat-trick in the franchise’s history, against the Sunwolves. He wanted to play fly-half after a conversation with Stephen Larkham. It never happened.

Australia used him as an apprentice in 2017 and capped him against New Zealand in Sydney in August 2018, a match in which he scored. Six more caps followed that year and then almost nothing: no minutes in the 2019 Rugby Championship, no World Cup, and a switch to the sevens programme in the hope of reaching Tokyo. He won an Olympic qualifying tournament with them and was cut from the final twelve.

He came to Pau in 2021 and broke his thumb in his first match. Then the thigh. He has been fit since, scoring twice against Toulouse in his second season and becoming one of the side’s principal attacking outlets.

The youngest of four brothers, he has lived in France since 2021 and speaks the language fluently, which is more than most imports in the Top 14 manage in five years.