Pierre Popelin

He played the best match of his career in a promotion semi-final and went off injured before the end of it.

Vannes finished second in Pro D2 in 2021 and Pierre Popelin was central to it. He played superbly in the promotion semi-final against Biarritz and limped out of it before the end.

Note on his current club: Popelin is still listed in Castres‘s squad data. He returned to RC Vannes in 2026, on three seasons.

Full-back and fly-half, 1.81m and 87kg, born in Tours on 23 June 1995. He also plays sevens.

He started at US Tours and went into the La Rochelle academy. Vannes signed him on a single season in 2018 and extended him by three the following year.

After that semi-final he went back to La Rochelle, and found the shirt taken. Antoine Hastoy was ahead of him and the game time did not come, so he moved to Castres for 2023-24 to replace Benjamín Urdapilleta, who had left for Clermont.

Replacing Urdapilleta is a difficult brief. He was the club’s goal-kicker and its controlling ten for six seasons, and Castres had reached a final with him. Popelin arrived as the answer to that, at 28, having never held a first-choice place in the top division.

Three seasons later he has gone back to the club where he played his best rugby, on the longest contract of his career.

A versatile back who can cover fifteen and ten and kick goals, which is exactly the profile a Top 14 squad wants on a bench and rarely the profile it builds a team around. His record reads as a good second-division player who spent five years finding out whether he was a good first-division one.