Pierre Huguet

He signed a Top 14 contract that was never honoured, and spent another two years in the second division before getting there.

In February 2020 Pierre Huguet signed a two-year pre-contract with Castres and a place in the Top 14 with it. The deal was never honoured. He stayed at Carcassonne, and it took another club, another pre-contract and two more years before he played in the division at all.

Back-rower at Stade Français, 1.94m and 106kg, and 30 years old.

He is from the Richelieu country and learned the game at SC Chinon. US Tours took him at Crabos level in 2012, by way of the Touraine Plus junior side, and a serious injury there cost him a long stretch of it.

Nobody came for him after that, so he approached the Dax academy himself. A season as an espoir, then the academy proper, and a first professional match-day squad at Colomiers in October 2016.

Dax went down to the third division in 2018 and he moved to Carcassonne, again into an academy first and onto a professional contract in the second year. He was a regular there when Castres came and went.

Grégory Patat brought him to Bayonne on a pre-contract in November 2021, and the club won promotion in the meantime. So the top flight arrived in 2022-23, after eight seasons in Pro D2 and at twenty-seven.

Nothing about that route is decorated. There are no caps, no age-grade selections and no honours on his record, and the only reason a Top 14 club has him at thirty is the work rate a back-rower builds up over eight years in a division where nobody is rested.

Bayonne did not renew him after 2023-24. Paris signed him on a three-year pre-contract instead, which is a longer deal than either of the two clubs that had him in the second division ever offered.