Maxime Baudonne

Maxime Baudonne made twenty-two tackles on his Champions Cup debut, against Leinster, in a match his club lost 42-10 at home. He was 20, and lighter than almost anyone else in the position at that level.

Flanker or No 8 at Racing 92, 1.90m and 95kg, and 24 years old.

Born in Bayonne but raised in the Paris suburbs, he started at Courbevoie in 2009 and joined the Racing youth sides four years later. France used him through the age grades: an under-18 tour of South Africa in 2019, the captaincy of an under-20 development side against Italy, and two tries against Scotland in the 2021 under-20 Six Nations.

He played his first league match at nineteen while still in the under-23 side, and his first start in January 2022. By the following season he was the club’s first-choice No 8, and by the one after that a starting flanker, with a double against Oyonnax in a 66-10 win.

The numbers have grown steadily: four Top 14 matches in 2021-22, twenty in 2022-23, twenty-eight in 2023-24 and twenty-nine in 2024-25, with twenty-two starts in the last of those.

France have twice come close. He was a training partner during the 2024 Six Nations and was named in a 42-man group in January 2025, then replaced within days by the prop Tevita Tatafu and not recalled.

A high-volume tackler who has made a career out of being lighter than the job is supposed to require, and who scored the try that took his club into the play-offs in 2024.