Tom Belkessa

Tom Belkessa is a French back-row forward at Clermont, born on 28 July 2006. He stands 1.81m and weighs 98kg.

Those numbers are worth pausing on. Eighteen of the twenty-one forwards in this Clermont squad are heavier than he is, several by thirty kilos, and the two teenage locks the club has extended long-term, Léo Michaux and Baptiste Veschambre, are both over two metres. A back-rower at 98kg in that company is either an openside or he is still growing. At twenty, probably both.

The rest of the public record does not exist yet. No Wikipedia article in French or English, no age-grade international appearance recorded under his name, and no mention in Clermont’s published season summaries.

That is normal for a player at this stage and it is not a judgement on him. It does mean this page cannot yet tell you where he learnt the game, who spotted him, or what he is like to play against, and inventing any of it would be worse than admitting the gap.

What is on the record is a place in the Top 14 squad list at twenty, at a club that has given four teenagers professional minutes in the last two seasons. The profile gets rewritten when he earns a paragraph that is actually about him.