Thibault Daubagna

Thibault Daubagna has played more than three hundred matches for one club, more than anyone else in its professional history. Jurançon raised him. His father and grandfather took him to watch, he started playing at six, and he has never played for anyone else.

Scrum-half at Pau, 1.77m and 83kg, and 32 years old.

He was brought up as a winger and converted to scrum-half, came through every junior grade at the club, and made his first-team debut at nineteen in August 2013, on with ten minutes left against Auch.

The under-20 Grand Slam came that season with him in the squad, alongside Arthur Iturria, François Cros and Félix Lambey, and he scored against Fiji at the junior world championship while competing for the shirt with Baptiste Serin.

Suspensions and injuries gave him the number nine jersey and he has held it, more or less, for a decade. A second-division title followed in 2015 alongside Jean Bouilhou and Damien Traille, which took the club back up, and kicked forty points in his first top-flight season while the club had two All Blacks fly-halves on its books.

Three hundred matches at one club is a number that has almost disappeared from French rugby. Squads turn over every two or three years, and a player good enough to hold a Top 14 shirt for a decade is normally good enough to be bought by somebody richer at least once.

Montpellier came for him and he stayed. He captained the side, held off Julien Tomas and then Dan Robson, and in the summer of 2025 was capped by France in New Zealand at thirty-one, twelve years after his Top 14 career began.