Will Collier

Will Collier made his Premiership debut in 2012 and scored his first try in the competition ten years later, against Bristol, by selling the defence a dummy. Tightheads are not paid for that, which is roughly the point of him: he is paid for the scrum.

Tighthead prop at Castres, 1.83m and 120kg, born in Hammersmith.

He captained the rugby side at Cranleigh School and played for Rosslyn Park as a teenager. Harlequins gave him a first appearance in the 2010-11 Anglo-Welsh Cup, and he stayed fourteen seasons. He passed a hundred games by 2017 and two hundred in 2021-22.

Serious injuries interrupted it — a knee in 2015-16, an ankle the season after — but he was part of both Harlequins Premiership title sides, in 2011-12 and 2020-21, and a losing Challenge Cup finalist in 2016. When he extended in early 2020 he said he had supported the club all his life.

England Under-20s took him to the 2011 Six Nations and junior world championship, where they reached the final. He played an uncapped match against the Barbarians in June 2014. His full debut came on the 2017 summer tour of Argentina, and he scored an international try in the second Test.

He left England for Castres from 2024-25, at an age when most English props are winding down rather than moving abroad.

Castres have built a pack around exactly this: Levan Chilachava on the other side of the scrum, both of them the wrong side of 34, both signed to do one job properly rather than several adequately.

A specialist scrummager who became one of the better tightheads in the Premiership on that alone, and who has arrived in the Top 14 at 35 in a competition that will test it every week.