Paul Abadie

He was a replacement in a Top 14 final that finished 59-3. The following season he played one match.

Paul Abadie was a replacement at the Stade Vélodrome on 28 June 2024, when Bordeaux met Toulouse in the Top 14 final and lost 59-3. The season after it he played one match for the club, and in February he was loaned to Paris as Brad Weber’s medical joker.

A scrum-half at Stade Français, 1.76m and 88kg, and 32 years old.

Agen is the family business. His father André played there, his grandfather Serge Méricq before that, and the Tolot brothers, Loris and Lucas, are his first cousins. He joined the club at seven in 2001 and was in the professional side by 2013.

Then came the full second-division experience in one place: promotion in 2015, relegation in 2016, promotion again in 2017. He signed two extensions inside two years, the second taking him to 2021, and by then he had played through three divisions without ever leaving.

Brive took him in January 2021 on two seasons and an option. Bordeaux followed for 2023-24, and the final at Marseille came at the end of it.

Before any of that he had gone through the France age grades at under-17, under-18 and under-19, and was called to a camp at Marcoussis with the under-20s in 2013. No senior cap has followed.

The loan to Paris is the sort of move a squad nine makes at thirty-two: cover for an injured man, at a club that needed a body who had done it before. He had twelve seasons of professional rugby behind him when he arrived, and had been at three of the four clubs he has played for while they were changing division.