Julien Delbouis

Julien Delbouis was picked in L’Équipe’s team of the week at nineteen, after the first start of his career, against Castres. He has since been named in three France squads and has not played a minute for them.

A centre at Stade Français, 1.84m and 103kg, and 27 years old.

Clamart is home. One professional season at Massy, at barely eighteen, was enough to bring Paris in for 2018-19, and he had a try and five match-day squads behind him before that seventh-round start.

The age-grade record is as good as a French forward’s gets. A Dubai sevens title with the under-18s in 2016. An under-20 Six Nations in 2018, playing above his year and scoring off the bench against Italy. A junior world championship in 2019. The Pôle France had him from 2018.

Fabien Galthié named him in a thirty-one in November 2020, for the Autumn Nations Cup match against Italy, in a squad shaped by the three-match limit on the senior players. He did not get on. January 2023 brought a Six Nations call-up and the same outcome, and a twenty-three-man camp at the end of that season made three.

At 103kg he is heavy for the position and built for the collision rather than the outside break, which is a profile France has generally looked elsewhere for.

Eight seasons into a career that began with a team-of-the-week notice, he is a squad centre at the club that signed him at nineteen, which is a harder thing to sustain than it sounds.