Mathieu Smaili

A junior world champion in 2019 who was starting in midfield outside Julian Savea and Josua Tuisova in the same year.

Mathieu Smaïli won the junior world championship with France in 2019. In the same year, at twenty, he was starting in the Toulon midfield in a back line that contained Julian Savea and Josua Tuisova. Both of those things happening in one season is unusual.

Centre, fly-half or full-back at Toulon, 1.80m and 92kg, and 26 years old.

He is from Hyères, twenty kilometres along the coast, and started at the Racing Club Hyérois at about five. There was no move away and no academy elsewhere: he found the professional game at his local club in 2018 and has stayed.

The under-23 side won a national title in 2019 with him in it, the same year as the junior world championship. He was a Challenge Cup finalist with the senior side in 2022, and in November of that year the French Barbarians named him in a 23-man squad to play Fiji at the Stade Pierre-Mauroy.

What has not followed is a France cap. The 2019 junior world-winning side has produced a long list of internationals, and he is among the players from it who have spent the years since as a squad man rather than a starter.

The versatility is the reason he is still here. A club carrying internationals at twelve, thirteen and fifteen needs someone who can fill any of the three at short notice, and he has done that for seven seasons.

A utility back with a junior world medal and a Top 14 career built entirely at one club.