Louis Carbonel

No French player has scored more points at a Junior World Championship than Louis Carbonel. He won the tournament twice, in 2018 and 2019, and finished with 112 — past Pierre Bernard’s record, and fifth on the all-time list across every nation. He has five senior caps.

Fly-half at Stade Français, 1.80m and 82kg, and 27 years old.

His father Alain played centre for Toulon, and after a start at RC Canton Garde Pradet the son went to the same club. A European Under-18 title came in 2017. At the 2018 junior world championship on home soil he began as Romain Ntamack’s replacement; from the decisive pool match against South Africa the coaches played both, moving Ntamack to twelve, and that pairing beat South Africa, New Zealand and England in the final.

Toulon used him in Top 14 at eighteen, seven minutes off the bench against Paris in September 2017. By 2018-19 he had gone past François Trinh-Duc in the pecking order and was voted the division’s best fly-half in a Rugbyrama readers’ poll at nineteen.

Two European finals followed and both were lost. Against Bristol in September 2020 he played the full match and kicked fourteen of his side’s nineteen points in a 32-19 defeat; against Lyon in 2022 he lasted eighty minutes of a 30-12 loss.

Fabien Galthié, the coach who had given him his Toulon debut, called him up in January 2020 and capped him against Italy that November, off the bench for Matthieu Jalibert. A week later he came on in the Autumn Nations Cup final England won after extra time.

Montpellier signed him in 2022 with two years still to run at Toulon. He kicked the penalty that beat Grenoble in the 2024 play-off and kept them up. A hamstring injury cost him a France tour that June. Released after two seasons, he signed a three-year deal in Paris.