Nicolas Corato

Nicolas Corato started as a No. 8 at Rieumes at ten years old and was moved two rows forward as a cadet at Auch. He also did an apprenticeship at the Pavie training centre to qualify as a heavy goods vehicle driver, in the same intake as Pierre Bourgarit.

Tighthead prop at Castres, 1.84m and 123kg.

Auch gave him his first senior rugby in Fédérale 1 in 2016-17, in a season when the club threw a lot of young players in — Bourgarit and Grégory Alldritt among them. He debuted off the bench against Provence in October 2016 and scored against Bourg-en-Bresse in January.

Pau took him next, and he spent seven years there being squeezed and squeezing back. Maks van Dyk arrived to compete with him, then Siate Tokolahi and Kevin Yaméogo, and he started the season anyway and played well enough to earn a three-year extension to 2024. A dislocated radius in October 2022 cost him several weeks. He played his hundredth match for the club on 17 February 2024, a 20-10 win at Bordeaux-Bègles.

The French Barbarians picked him twice: against Tonga in Lyon in November 2021, a 42-17 win, and against the United States in Houston on 1 July 2022, a 26-21 defeat. He played for France Under-19s. He has no full cap.

Pau did not keep him and Castres signed him on three years from 2024-25 — into a squad that already had Will Collier and Levan Chilachava at tighthead.

He has won nothing in ten seasons. He has also never been anywhere he was not competing with an international.