The only Toulouse lock France have never called up is also the one who will be missed most this winter.
Toulouse lock Clément Vergé has ruptured his anterior cruciate ligament, suffered while making a tackle at the Girona training camp last week. He is expected to be out for around eight months, with a return hoped for in the spring. He was not in the squad that won in Bayonne on Friday (54-47), the French champions’ only friendly of the summer.
Two players lost in the same passage of play
The Spanish camp cost the club a second player. Valentin Delpy, back from a season on loan at Colomiers, dislocated his shoulder clearing out a ruck, a few minutes before Vergé’s injury. The 23-year-old fly-half avoids surgery but faces around three months of recovery, just as the staff were planning to use him as back-up to Romain Ntamack.
The one who stayed when the others left
The loss is not just a matter of numbers. Of the five locks in the Toulouse squad this season, Vergé is the only one never to have been capped. That is precisely what made him available when the others were not.
| Player | Top 14 matchday squads 2025-26 | Starts | International |
|---|---|---|---|
| Joshua Brennan | 19 | 18 | France |
| Clément Vergé | 23 | 13 | none |
| Emmanuel Meafou | 13 | 12 | France |
| Efrain Elias | 21 | 10 | Argentina |
| Thibaud Flament | 16 | 9 | France |
Vergé was named in more matchday squads than any of his rivals last season, without being the one who started most often. Breaking it down by period makes it even clearer. In the six Top 14 rounds played during the November and Six Nations international windows, he started six times out of six, paired sometimes with Elias, sometimes with Brennan. Flament and Meafou did not play in a single one of those six matches.
| Date | Match | No. 4 | No. 5 |
|---|---|---|---|
| 01/11/2025 | Toulouse – Stade Français | Elias | Vergé |
| 22/11/2025 | Montauban – Toulouse | Brennan | Vergé |
| 31/01/2026 | Toulouse – Bayonne | Brennan | Vergé |
| 15/02/2026 | Stade Français – Toulouse | Elias | Vergé |
| 28/02/2026 | Toulouse – Montauban | Brennan | Vergé |
| 22/03/2026 | Bordeaux-Bègles – Toulouse | Elias | Vergé |
Four seasons on the rise
The 24-year-old from Ariège was not yet an automatic starter, but his trajectory only went one way. He was a replacement in the final won against Montpellier at the end of June (28-20), and in the semi-final against Racing 92 (71-17).
| Season | Top 14 matchday squads | Starts |
|---|---|---|
| 2022-23 | 5 | 2 |
| 2023-24 | 14 | 5 |
| 2024-25 | 17 | 14 |
| 2025-26 | 23 | 13 |
On top of that come three Champions Cup appearances in 2024-2025. Out of contract in June 2027, Vergé is being tracked by Lyon and Toulon, and the club want to extend his deal.
A medical joker hard to find at the end of August
Ugo Mola has four locks left: Brennan, Flament, Meafou and Elias. All four are internationals, and the calendar makes the point straight away. Elias is on the Argentina bench against Australia this Saturday, his third international matchday squad of the summer after England in July and South Africa in early August.
The club have been working their contacts to find a medical joker, but options are thin eight days before the season starts, with every squad already settled. The real issue is November and the Six Nations: Toulouse have lost the player who covered exactly those periods.
A busy August
The injuries come on top of a turbulent summer. The appeals committee of the French Rugby Federation (FFR) only slightly reduced the club’s salary cap fine, cut from €2.88 million to €2.725 million. Thomas Ramos will join Racing 92 and François Cros will join LOU at the end of the coming season. Le Progrès also reports that Lyon are interested in Emmanuel Meafou, out of contract in 2027, as well as Tom Staniforth and Pierre Bochaton.
Toulouse’s Top 14 season starts on Sunday 6 September at La Rochelle.
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