Pierre Colonna

Toulouse trained him and let him go. Castres took him, and have now contracted him to 2028.

Pierre Colonna has been extended twice by Castres, most recently in February 2025, and is now contracted to 2028. That is an eight-year relationship with a club he joined after another one had finished training him.

Hooker, 1.88m and 113kg, born in Marseille on 14 June 2001, and of Corsican family.

He started at Cahors Rugby, moved into the Toulouse academy, and then into the Castres one. Toulouse produce more front-rowers than they can use, and moving between two academies before turning professional is a common and unglamorous route into the position.

His first professional match came on 23 October 2020 against Toulon, at nineteen. He signed a two-year contract at the end of 2022 and the extension to 2028 came a little over two years after that.

The published record stops here, and so does this profile.

What the squad list shows is the shape of his career. Castres carry three hookers, and he is competing with Loris Zarantonello, who is an Italy international. At 1.88m and 113kg Colonna is taller and heavier than the average for the position, which tells at lineout time more than in the scrum.

Being the understudy to a capped international is a long apprenticeship, and hooker is a position where clubs are content to wait: throwing accuracy takes years, and most first-choice hookers in this league are past thirty.

He is 25, has been at the club since his teens, and has a contract that runs until he is 27. Clubs do not give four-year deals to players they intend to release, and that is the clearest single fact on this page.