Sacha Zegueur

Sacha Zegueur won the junior world championship in 2018 and again in 2019, and was called into a France squad in November 2020 to replace the injured Yacouba Camara. He was playing in the second division at the time. He has still not been capped.

A No 8, 1.92m and 105kg, on Pau‘s books at 27.

Oyonnax is his home town. Football came first, and the game itself only at eleven, at the town club. His professional debut came at nineteen, starting at flanker in a one-point win at Colomiers, and he played twenty league matches in that first season.

A right cruciate ligament rupture in January 2021 ended a season that had already been limited to ten matches. He left his home club at 23 for the top division, which he had never played in.

The Top 14 introduction was not gentle: a start against Montpellier and a 43-17 defeat. He finished that first season with eighteen league matches and a try at Perpignan, and signed on to 2027 the following August.

What changed him was moving to the middle of the back row and cutting out the penalties. He has been a fixture since, and France called him up again in March 2023 and June 2023 without using him.

The uncapped record is the strange part. Of the France squad that won the 2018 and 2019 junior world championships, a substantial number have been capped since, several of them many times over. He was in both, has been called up three times, and has never got on.

A tall, athletic back-rower with as good a junior record as anyone of his age in France, and an international career that has consisted entirely of training weeks.