Sekou Macalou

Sekou Macalou played for France against the All Blacks on 14 November 2017 in Lyon. The match was arranged without the country’s leading players and was never recognised as a Test, so it earned him nothing. His first real cap came eleven days later, against Japan.

Flanker at Stade Français, 1.98m and 108kg, and 31 years old.

Sarcelles is home and he has organised a career around staying near it. Football and athletics came first, and he was quick enough as a boy to be moved up an age group; the speed survived the change of code and the years of sevens that followed.

He turned professional at Massy in 2013, and only after Didier Retière, then the federation’s technical director, moved him out of the backs and into the pack. Stade Français gave him his first professional contract in October 2017, to 2022. He was on the record of the side that won the Challenge Cup against Gloucester that year.

Big performances came early — against Munster in Europe, in the derbies with Racing — without a settled place behind them. That changed under Heyneke Meyer in 2018-19: an Oscar du Midol in the opening week, and by the fifteenth round he was the most-used player in the squad, with four tries and a place at the top of the tackle count.

Sevens took him to the 2018-19 World Series. France recalled him for the 2020 Autumn Nations Cup and he scored against Italy on 28 November, then came and went from Galthié’s squads without ever holding a place. He made the official thirty-three for the 2023 World Cup.

His old Under-20 coach Olivier Magne described a forward who could break a line and link the pack to the backs, and called him exceptional off the mark. The lineout work and the tackle numbers are real; so is the indiscipline that has always come with the activity.