Yacouba Camara

Yacouba Camara played his first top-flight match at nineteen, was the find of Stade Toulousain’s season, and had a France cap by twenty-one. Ten years on he has a championship medal and rather fewer caps than that start implied.

Flanker at Montpellier, 1.95m and 112kg, and 32 years old.

He grew up in Aubervilliers in a family from Mali and started at about twelve at AC Bobigny. Lycée Lakanal in Sceaux and the Massy academy followed, then the national centre at Marcoussis. Toulouse signed him in April 2013, before he had played a senior match.

Injuries to Thierry Dusautoir and Grégory Lamboley, and the absences of Yannick Nyanga and Louis Picamoles, gave him the 2013-14 season. He scored against the reigning champions in round seven and started the knockout matches in both the Top 14 and Europe at nineteen.

Guy Novès, who had coached him at Toulouse, capped him against Italy on 6 February 2016, on for the injured Picamoles after sixteen minutes. A first start came a week later in a 10-9 win over Ireland. He was dropped after the Scotland match and has never fully settled in the squad, though Jacques Brunel started him in the 2018 Six Nations and took him to the 2019 World Cup.

The move south came in 2017, at twenty-two, on one of the biggest contracts at the club. He started the semi-final and the final of the 2022 championship, alongside Zach Mercer and Alexandre Bécognée, and won it.

A tall, athletic flanker who can cover lock, and one of the more talented forwards of his French generation.