Sebastien Bezy

In 2017 Toulouse signed a scrum-half from Castres named Antoine Dupont. Sébastien Bézy was 25, had started a Six Nations match for France the year before, and was the man in possession. Within a season he was not.

Note on his current club: Bézy is still listed in Clermont‘s squad data. After six seasons in the Auvergne he signed a two-year deal with Montpellier from 2026-27.

He is 1.74m and light, which nobody has ever pretended is an advantage. What he does instead is play close to the ball and find the narrow gap between two defenders, which drags them in and opens something for the man outside. Christophe Urios, then at Castres, said in 2015 that Toulouse simply played better rugby from the moment Bézy started. Fabien Galthié, who played the position for France, described him as a sensitif and singled out his field of vision.

He started at COM Bagneux in the Paris suburbs and played for the Hauts-de-Seine selection alongside Jules Plisson. Toulouse took him at fifteen, in 2006, and he won the cadets championship in his first season and again the next. He studied electrical engineering alongside it. His older brother Nicolas came through the same academy and now plays at Provence.

His first-team debut came against Bourgoin on 23 April 2011, on for David Skrela in a 33-0 win, and he was part of the squad that won the championship that season. The first start came at fly-half against Stade Français at the Stade de France in October 2012.

2014-15 was when he took the shirt. Guy Novès made him first choice through the play-offs, and in 2015-16 he opened the season kicking at 100 per cent from the tee across five matches. That earned a France call. He started the opening game of the 2016 Six Nations against Italy, missed his first three kicks, handed the tee to Plisson, and won 23-21. Eight caps in all.

He left Toulouse for Clermont in 2020, into another selection fight, this time with Morgan Parra. He won a French championship with Toulouse in 2019, beating Clermont 24-18 in the final.

At 34, Montpellier are getting a tempo scrum-half who has been kept out by two of the best of his generation and is still worth a starting shirt.