Thomas Lainault

Thomas Lainault lost three consecutive second-division finals with Grenoble, in 2023, 2024 and 2025, and lost the promotion play-off in each of those seasons too. Two of the three went to the last three minutes: 20-18 to Montpellier, then 13-11 to Perpignan. He reached the top flight in the end by being transferred.

Lock at Racing 92, 1.97m and 112kg, and 32 years old.

Tours is where he started, at Saint-Pierre-des-Corps, before Bordeaux-Bègles took him into their junior sides in 2011. He won a national under-23 title there in 2016, in a final against Clermont decided by a kicking competition.

A tour of the second division and below followed. Carcassonne for two years, the second as captain. A season at Bourg-en-Bresse in which the club won thirteen matches, took sixty points and went down by a single point. Then Rouen, who were fifteenth and in the relegation place when Covid ended the season and the relegations were cancelled.

Grenoble signed him in 2021 and made him one of five captains by 2024-25, a season they finished top of and still did not go up.

He was named in the division’s team of the season and moved to the Top 14 that summer, while still under contract, at 31.

Ten seasons, six clubs and not one promotion earned on the field. The transfer that finally moved him up came while he was still contracted elsewhere, which is the only route into the division he had not already tried.

A lineout lock with a decade of second-division rugby behind him and a first season in the top flight beginning at an age when most forwards are going the other way.