Quentin Walcker

When Fabien Galthié named his squad for the 2021 tour of Australia, Quentin Walcker and Melvyn Jaminet were the only two players in it who had spent the previous season outside the top flight. Perpignan had just won Pro D2. Walcker won two caps on that tour.

Loosehead prop at Castres, 1.81m and 109kg.

Born in Le Creusot and raised in Agde, he went into the Perpignan system as a minime, attending the Lycée Aristide Maillol and the Béziers pôle espoirs. France capped him at every age group from Under-17 to Under-20, including junior world championships in 2015 and 2016.

His first professional match was on 25 November 2016, off the bench in a 66-13 win over Narbonne. He won the espoirs championship with Perpignan in 2017 and Pro D2 titles in 2018 and 2021.

Castres announced him on 1 February 2021 for that summer, and he stayed central to Perpignan’s promotion season regardless.

He started the 2022 Top 14 semi-final win over Toulouse in a front row with Gaëtan Barlot and Wilfrid Hounkpatin, and the final three weeks later, lost 29-10 to Montpellier. Twenty-one league matches that season.

He held the Castres loosehead shirt in 2022-23 ahead of Wayan de Benedettis and Antoine Tichit. Then a groin problem stopped him playing in November 2023 and he had surgery at the end of that month, with a recovery measured in months rather than weeks.

A short, low scrummager who reached a France squad from the second division, which almost nobody does. Getting back to that level after the groin is the whole of his remaining career.