Marco Tauleigne

Marco Tauleigne did not like rugby. He was taken to Le Teil at four because his father coached there, and he only started enjoying the game at about ten, when his friends began playing it too. His first France cap came at 24.

Note on his current club: Tauleigne is still listed in Montpellier‘s squad data. He signed a two-year contract with Valence Romans Drôme Rugby in 2026, returning to the region he is from.

Back row, 1.91m and 115kg, and 32 years old.

Montélimar is his birthplace and the family is a rugby family throughout. His father Michel won the Coupe Frantz Reichel with La Voulte in 1984, and his brother Thibault lost a final in the same competition with the Oyonnax under-23s.

Laurent Marti signed him out of Bourgoin-Jallieu for Bordeaux-Bègles in 2013, the year Bourgoin lost a third-tier final. A national under-23 title followed in 2016 and the French Barbarians took him to South Africa in June 2017, where he started both matches and scored in the second.

Jacques Brunel gave him a first cap against Ireland on 3 February 2018 and kept him at No 8 for the rest of that Six Nations, which remains the high point of his international record.

The move to the Hérault came in 2021 on three seasons. A French championship followed the next year, and the Challenge Cup in 2026 alongside a losing Top 14 final. Forty-one matches and twenty points for the club.

A carrying eight in a career that has been steady rather than spectacular, and which ends where it began, in the Drôme.