Louis Foursans-Bourdette

He was the fly-half who got Montpellier to the play-offs in a title season, and then did not play in them.

Montpellier won the French championship in 2022. Their main fly-half through that season, once Handré Pollard and Paolo Garbisi had both been hurt, was Louis Foursans-Bourdette, who was twenty. He played no part in the play-offs and watched the final from outside.

Fly-half and scrum-half at Stade Français, 1.70m and 80kg, and 24 years old.

He grew up in Nîmes beside the Jardins de la Fontaine and carries his grandfather’s name; the grandfather ran the racecourse there. RC Nîmes had him from eight, the Béziers pôle espoir took him at lycée, and France picked him at under-16 and under-18 before Montpellier’s academy came in during 2019, while he was still seventeen.

The debut came in November 2020 at eighteen, on for Alex Lozowski against Bayonne. Three weeks later at Clermont he kicked seven penalties, every point his side scored, and was man of the match. A contract extension followed within a fortnight.

Three professional appearances had made him the obvious answer at ten in Pollard’s absence, ahead of Lozowski, Thomas Darmon and Johan Goosen. Injuries then took most of that season off him: seven matches, forty-four points.

The title year gave him nineteen matches, fourteen of them starts, and 136 points. France Under-20 capped him against Ireland in February 2022, once, and the French Barbarians took him to Houston that summer.

Bernard Laporte’s arrival at Montpellier ended it. With a year still to run he signed three seasons in Paris before 2024-25, which is what a fly-half does when the new coach has stopped picking him.