Maxime Machenaud

Philippe Saint-André’s explanation for dropping Maxime Machenaud was unusually blunt: he said the player no longer met international standards because his club had put too much weight on him. Machenaud went two years without a France cap after that, then came back and started a Six Nations.

Note on his current club: Machenaud is still listed in Bayonne‘s squad data. In June 2026 he returned to Racing 92, four years after leaving, on a one-year deal with a further year optional.

He is a scrum-half, 1.74m and 87kg, born in Bordeaux and developed at Stade Bordelais and then CA Bordeaux-Bègles. He won a starting place in Pro D2 there, moved to Agen where the Top 14 audience noticed him, and then to Racing, where he became undroppable almost immediately.

Racing won the championship in 2016 and was sent off in the final. He lost three European Cup finals with them, in 2016, 2018 and 2020. He captained the side in 2019 when Dimitri Szarzewski’s season fell apart, Racing went out in the play-off, and club president Jacky Lorenzetti publicly questioned his standing in the squad — weeks before his first World Cup.

France capped him in Tucumán in June 2012 and he scored one of six tries in a 49-10 win. Thirty-eight caps, twenty-four starts, 149 points. Five Six Nations campaigns, and he was the tournament’s leading scorer in 2018 with 50 points. He came off the bench in the 2019 World Cup opener against Argentina without having played a single warm-up match.

He joined Bayonne in June 2022 and spent four seasons there.

A goal-kicking nine with a fast pass and a short fuse, and at 37 the return to Racing reads like a man going back to finish where he was best.