Levan Chilachava

Levan Chilachava’s first appearance in the Top 14 was the 2012 final, against Toulouse. Most players get a few dozen league games before a final. He got the final first.

Prop at Castres, 1.88m and 133kg, the heaviest player in the squad, and there since May 2021.

Born in Sukhumi, he played for Georgia at Under-17 and Under-20 level before joining the Toulon academy for 2010-11. Toulon won the Reichel championship with him in 2010 and was a losing espoirs finalist in 2011. His first senior match came on 10 November 2011, in the Challenge Cup against Petrarca Padova, and he scored in a 53-22 win.

What followed was the most decorated period any Toulon squad has had. Three consecutive European Cups, in 2013, 2014 and 2015. A French championship on 31 May 2014, beating Castres in the final, which is the club he now plays for. Two losing Top 14 finals in 2012 and 2013 and a losing Challenge Cup final in 2012.

Georgia took him to the 2015 World Cup in England, in Milton Haig’s thirty-one. He won two European Nations Championships, in 2012 and 2014.

His cap count is not stated consistently in the public record — his Wikipedia entry gives both 40 and 23 in the same article — so this page does not put a number on it.

Castres signed him in 2021 and he was a losing finalist with them in 2022, against Montpellier. That is five major finals lost and four won across a fifteen-year career.

A pure scrummaging prop of the old kind. At 35 the weight is the asset and the mobility never was.