Yohan Orabe

Twelve tries in a season in the third division, then two years lost to a fractured tibia and compartment syndrome.

Yohan Orabé scored twelve tries in twenty-four matches in Fédérale 1 in 2021-22. Bayonne took him straight from the third division into the Top 14. He then lost most of two seasons to injury.

Full-back, 1.82m and 83kg, born in Saint-Palais on 21 May 2002 and from the village of Chéraute in the Soule.

He joined Sport Athlétique Mauléonais in 2007, at five, and stayed there until he was twenty. His first-team chance came in the 2020-21 season, the one the pandemic cut short, and the twelve tries came the year after.

Going from Fédérale 1 to the Top 14 in one move is rare. The third division is amateur or semi-professional, two promotions below the top flight, and clubs almost never recruit directly from it into a first-team squad.

His first season at Bayonne brought debuts in both the Top 14 and the Challenge Cup. His second brought no matches at all: first a periostitis, then a fractured tibia, then compartment syndrome — a complication serious enough to need surgical release, and one of the few injuries in the sport that can end a career outright.

He came back in 2024, played six matches, and the club extended him to 2027 that November. A month later he was injured again, this time with a groin problem.

The record here is two good seasons in amateur rugby and one interrupted professional career. He is 24, which is young enough for the sequence to mean nothing in the end, and he has a contract that runs three more years to prove it.