Youri Delhommel

Youri Delhommel came on for Bismarck du Plessis against Grenoble in April 2019 and scored nine minutes later. He finished that season with three tries in four appearances, which for a hooker arriving in the top division is a considerable rate.

At 1.81m and 101kg he hooks for Pau, and he is 30.

Ris-Orangis gave him the game in 2004, and the Massy academy took him at fourteen. The climb was done entirely in the lower divisions: three matches in the third tier in 2015-16, then fourteen and a promotion, then twenty-three matches and six tries in his first season in the second.

Montpellier signed him in the summer of 2018 and left him at Massy on loan, then brought him in early the following February to cover Vincent Giudicelli’s surgery.

Two and a half seasons there produced steady rugby and the only red card of his career, for a dangerous tackle on Antoine Hastoy in 2019, against the club he now plays for.

The Béarn took him in 2021 and he has shared the front row with Lucas Rey ever since. Seventeen league matches in his first season, twenty-two in his second, and two contract extensions that carry him to 2027.

The route is what makes the record unusual. Ris-Orangis to Massy to a promotion out of the third division, then a top-flight contract at 22 and eight seasons in the division without ever having come through a first-division academy. Most hookers in the league were identified at fifteen.

A mobile, try-scoring hooker who reached the Top 14 at 23 from the third division, and has stayed in it for eight seasons without ever being the first name on a team sheet.