Yerim Fall

In the summer of 2021 Yerim Fall scored a hat-trick in the quarter-final of the Under-18 European sevens championship and two more in the final. France won it. He was eighteen and playing third-division rugby at the time.

He is a wing at Clermont, 1.78m and 90kg, and a France sevens international.

He started at USO Athis-Mons in 2012 and moved to RC Massy in 2016. His senior debut came in September 2021, in Nationale, starting on the right wing against Soyaux Angoulême at eighteen. Two months later Massy used him at inside centre against Dax. He finished that first season with nine appearances and a try, and watched from outside the squad as Massy won the final and went up to Pro D2.

That June he joined the Clermont academy. Within two months he was training with the professionals for pre-season friendlies against Toulon and Bordeaux-Bègles, and playing Supersevens for the club.

France kept picking him. A development Under-20 tour against Ireland in April 2022, where he scored twice in a 50-21 win. A training-partner camp with the senior squad that autumn. The Under-20 Six Nations in 2023, where he came on for Maël Moustin against Italy — his only appearance of the tournament. He was in the fifty-one-man group for the 2023 Junior World Championship and did not make the final cut. France won it without him.

His Top 14 debut came in November 2023, starting on the wing at Toulouse. Clermont lost 31-10 and he was tripped by Thomas Ramos a few metres short of the line. He had been talked about all pre-season as the club’s answer to Damian Penaud leaving, which is an unreasonable thing to say about a twenty-year-old.

Quick, and a proven finisher in the shortened game. The question is whether he gets a run of fifteen-a-side starts long enough to settle.