Rémi Sénéca

A back-rower until he was twenty, he scored an intercept try against Bordeaux and beat the full-back on the outside to finish it.

Rémi Sénéca played lock and then back row until he was about twenty, and only then became a prop. It shows. In a 39-17 win over Bordeaux-Bègles he intercepted, beat Romain Buros on the outside, and scored.

Loosehead prop at Pau, 1.85m and 113kg, and 31 years old.

The north of France raised him. He played football until twelve, and was taken to rugby at Valenciennes by his godfather along with his older brother Jordan, who props professionally too. Stade Français took him into their academy in 2010, following the same brother.

A first professional match came against Castres in 2016-17, and that May he moved to Vannes in the second division. Four seasons there brought sixty-eight matches and a reputation for consistency rather than for anything spectacular.

He had a year left on that contract when he activated a release clause to move to the Béarn in 2021, and settled into the front-row rotation over three seasons.

A knee ligament rupture in a Challenge Cup match against the Cheetahs in January 2024 required surgery and cost him almost ten months. He was back against Stade Toulousain that October, and signed two more years the following May.

The 2025-26 season has been his best. A first start in December against Montauban, then the intercept, in a Top 14 campaign that had his club among the leading places.

Converting a back-rower into a prop is a long process and it usually fails. The scrum is a technical discipline that takes years to learn and cannot be improvised, and a player who arrives at twenty is starting a decade behind everyone around him. He has made a professional career out of it and reached the top division at 26.

An unusually mobile loosehead whose defensive work and handling come from the years he spent in the back row.