Jimi Maximin

Jimi Maximin made his top-flight debut at eighteen, six minutes off the bench against Racing 92 in March 2018. He did not play in the division again until October 2024. In between there was a ruptured cruciate ligament, a pandemic, a hamstring, and three loan spells in the divisions below.

Lock at Pau, 2.02m and 135kg, and 27 years old.

Born in Paris and raised in Bouville in the Eure-et-Loir, he played football first and found rugby at eleven at Bonneval. Chartres and the regional centre at Tours followed, then Montpellier’s high-performance programme in 2015.

The move to Pau came in 2020, and what followed was a search for rugby: Tarbes in the third division, twice, at one point training with one club on Mondays and Tuesdays and playing for the other at the weekend, then Rouen in the second, where he played ten matches under his former Pau coach and later alongside his brother Samuel.

He rejoined the senior squad in 2024 and scored in both competitions that season before a serious knee injury in January. He had already signed to 2027.

The 2025-26 season made him. Paired with Hugo Auradou, he scored a driven try against Toulouse in added time in round seven that put his club top of the table. Fabien Galthié named him in a 42-man squad that October, and when Emmanuel Meafou withdrew during the week he was capped against Fiji in Bordeaux, on for Romain Taofifénua after sixty-four minutes.

At 135kg he is among the heaviest forwards in the Top 14, and he took eight years to become one.