Thibaud Flament

FABIEN GALTHIÉ has a word for players in the France set-up who have followed unlikely paths to the international game; they’re known as ‘ovni’. In English, UFOs.

In his first squad in 2020 you had Anthony Bouthier, the former builder who played his first top-flight game at 27 and was starting for France within six months. His Montpellier team-mate Mohamed Haouas’s Test debut was not his first ‘Crunch’, having played for the French Navy against their English counterparts four years prior to packing down against Joe Marler and Co.

Since then, Gabin Villière has gone from being a second-team scrum-half in the third tier to a sevens standout and then a Test winger in just 18 months. And, last July, Melvyn Jaminet kicked France to a first win on Australian soil in 31 years before he’d got his first taste of the Top 14.

Even by those standards, Thibaud Flament’s emergence