Thibaud Lanen

Montpellier had watched Thibaud Lanen and his twin brother Clément playing for the Languedoc selection and wanted them both. They were about fifteen. A cousin already in the Clermont under-16s told them to go and trial there instead, at the club they supported. They did, and they never left.

Lanen is a second row at Clermont, 1.98m and 109kg, born in Mende in the Lozère into a rugby family, and he started at Rugby Club Mende Lozère alongside Clément.

The two of them went through everything together. Both into the Clermont academy at fifteen. Both at the Lycée Godefroy-de-Bouillon in Clermont-Ferrand, where they won the French schools championship in 2015 under Fabrice Ribeyrolles, a former ASM player, with Marc Palmier in the same side. Both in the team that won the espoirs championship in 2017-18. Both signed their first professional contracts in the same season.

He played his first senior matches in 2019-20 at 21 — eight matchday squads, six appearances off the bench and one start. The first professional deal ran to 2022. He extended in January 2022 to 2025, and again in December 2024 to 2027.

That is the whole career so far, and it is a specific kind of career: a home-grown lock who has never been the marquee signing, has never been dropped out of the club either, and keeps getting three more years.

He is a lineout forward first. Clermont have not asked him to be anything else, and with Thomas Ceyte at 35 and two teenagers pushing up behind, the middle of that second row is where the squad is thinnest and where he is most useful.