Léo Coly

Léo Coly was voted the best player in Pro D2 in 2022, and the revelation of the same season, which is a rare double for a scrum-half in a division built on forward play. He had already started a junior world championship final and won it.

Note on his current club: Coly is still listed in Montpellier‘s squad data. He signed a three-year contract with Bayonne in the summer of 2025, effective for the 2026-27 season.

Scrum-half, 1.75m and 76kg, and 26 years old.

Rennes is his birthplace, though the rugby started in Biscarrosse in the Landes, where he grew up and picked the game up in 2012. Stade Montois gave him a professional debut in December 2018 against Bourg-en-Bresse.

France picked him for the under-20s from the 2019 Six Nations, and he started both the semi-final and the final of that year’s junior world championship, each won against South Africa. The French Barbarians invited him in November 2021 for a 42-17 win over Tonga in Lyon.

Top 14 clubs came for him in 2022 despite a contract in the Landes running to 2025. Fabien Galthié called him into the France squad for the 2023 Six Nations, and he tore something a week before it started and missed the whole tournament. That is as close as he has come to a cap.

At Montpellier he won the Challenge Cup in 2026 and reached a Top 14 final in the same season, before moving on to the Basque coast.

A sharp, light nine who controls a game rather than breaks from it, and one of the better distributors outside the France squad.