Yanis Basse

Yanis Basse was due to start for France under-20s against Wales in 2026 and did not, because the club he plays for needed him that weekend. France won the Grand Slam anyway, their first since 2014, and he played three matches of it.

Hooker at Racing 92, 1.75m and 103kg, and 20 years old.

The game came to him at four, at the Évreux Athletic Club where his father Philippe had played, and joined the Racing junior sides at thirteen in 2020. He held a dual licence at first and then moved into the club’s boarding school, signing a two-year under-23 contract in 2025.

Before that he had played for the France university side against England, in 2024-25.

His first professional minutes came in the opening round of the 2025-26 Top 14 season, off the bench against Lyon. The club announced a three-year extension to 2029 on 6 February 2026, in the middle of the under-20 Six Nations, and he was called up for that summer’s junior world championship, which France reached the final of.

Being recalled by a club in the middle of a junior international window is not a compliment a twenty-year-old hooker usually receives. It happened because the senior squad was short at the position that weekend, and it cost him a start in a Grand Slam campaign.

At 1.75m and 103kg he is short and heavy even for a hooker, which is the build the position has been moving towards rather than away from.

A Grand Slam winner at junior level with a senior contract to 2029, in a club squad that has carried three international hookers in the last four seasons.