Joris Jurand

He spent several seasons training to be a referee before he went back to playing. Twelve tries in his first Clermont season followed.

Joris Jurand spent several seasons at the referees’ pôle espoirs in Béziers. He was training to officiate, not to play. He went back to playing in 2013-14, with Noves, the village he is from, and won a Provence first-series final that season.

He is a wing or full-back at Clermont, 1.88m and 106kg, which is unusually heavy for a back three player and is most of the reason he is hard to put down near the line.

The climb was slow and entirely from the bottom. Châteaurenard next, where in the first half of 2014-15 he scored fifteen tries for the reserves and was rewarded with a Fédérale 2 debut in January. Then the Provence Rugby academy, four Fédérale 1 appearances in 2016-17, and a move to Montpellier, where he captained the espoirs.

Brive took him in 2018 as an additional player alongside Guillaume Galletier, and extended him to 2022. In May 2023 Clermont signed him on two years from 2023-24.

He scored on his Top 14 debut for them, against Oyonnax in the opening round. His first season in the Auvergne produced twelve tries in seventeen matches, sixteen of them starts, in direct competition with Bautista Delguy and Alivereti Raka, and despite injuries early on.

The best and worst of him came in the Challenge Cup semi-final against the Sharks. He scored twice, had a third disallowed, and was taken out off the ball without possession when he had a fourth in front of him. Clermont lost by a point, 32-31.

The 2024 tour of Argentina took him, in a squad built mostly from players nobody had capped. He played against Uruguay on 10 July for the France development side. The match was not capped, so he remains uncapped.

Big, direct and a genuine finisher. Whether he starts depends on whether Clermont want power or pace on the left.