Section Paloise announced on Thursday that Jimi Maximin has extended his contract until June 2030, three more seasons. The 27-year-old lock arrived in Béarn in 2020 and won his first France cap there last November.

“I’m very proud to continue my journey with the Section. I want to build on the progress I’ve made in recent seasons and commit for the long term to a club where I’ve learned and improved a lot,” the player said in the club’s statement.

A Top 14 debut far earlier than reported

The story told around this extension is one of a late bloomer: arrived in 2020, loaned to Tarbes then Rouen, Top 14 debut in a Pau jersey in September 2024. A chapter is missing.

Maximin was in fact named on four Top 14 team sheets as early as the 2017-2018 season, aged eighteen, for Montpellier, the club where he came through. He never started a match there, but he was part of the professional squad. Seven seasons passed between that first taste and his real breakthrough at Pau.

Thirty-two appearances in two years

The spell in the lower divisions was long, and it paid off. Twenty-one matches in Nationale with Tarbes in 2021-2022, seventeen of them as a starter. Then two seasons at Rouen, twenty-five Pro D2 matches in all.

Back at Pau, his progress shows from one season to the next. Eight Top 14 appearances in 2024-2025, including seven starts. Then twenty-four in 2025-2026, including seventeen starts, plus one appearance in the Champions Cup. That makes thirty-two league appearances in two seasons, twenty-four of them starts.

The figures published this week vary depending on what is counted, with some including European competition. In the league alone, the twenty-four matches last season are not in dispute.

Pau lock down their pack

The extension comes a week after hooker Youri Delhommel committed until June 2029. It is part of a deliberate policy from Sébastien Piqueronies, who wants to make Maximin a leader in the dressing room.

To do so, he will have to hold his place in a crowded second row, with Baptiste Pesenti back, Mickaël Capelli and Rémi Picquette in the squad, not to mention Hugo Auradou, his main partner last season. After surgery in the Achilles tendon area, Maximin is not in the squad travelling to Montpellier on Saturday.