Stade Français confirmed on Friday that Tani Vili has extended his contract until 2029. The 25-year-old centre, who can also cover in the back row, commits for three more seasons after a campaign that relaunched his career.
Pieter-Steph du Toit will reach 100 caps on Saturday in Cape Town, eight days after Damian de Allende did so at Ellis Park. The 34-year-old back-row forward will become the eleventh centurion in Springbok history, at home and wearing the armband.
Section Paloise confirmed on Monday that Youri Delhommel has extended his contract until June 2029. The 30-year-old hooker, who arrived from Montpellier in 2021, is coming off his most prolific season: seven tries, an unusual tally for his position.
Fourteen of the sixteen Pro D2 coaches named Provence Rugby as future champions in the Midi Olympique poll. Our records put that in perspective: since 2012, the team top of the regular season has gone up only four times in thirteen. Provence know all about it, knocked out in the play-off in 2024 after dominating the league.
Midi Olympique revealed that UBB were targeting England international prop Beno Obano for 2027, pointing to the end of the contract of Jefferson Poirot, who turns 34 in November. Our playing-time data adds a nuance: since signing what he described as his last contract, the Bordeaux captain has never played so much, and he has just returned to the France side.
Carcassonne and Mont-de-Marsan, the two clubs relegated from Pro D2 this summer, opened their Nationale season with two bonus-point wins: 32-14 against Albi and 47-0 against Vienne. Between them, 79 points scored and 14 conceded over the round. Meanwhile, Périgueux lost at home for the first time in 546 days of league rugby.
Monaco won the first leg of the In Extenso Supersevens in Biarritz on Saturday, beating Toulon 21-12 in the final. Five matches over two days, five wins, 104 points scored and 39 conceded. In the women's event, Stade Toulousain beat Clermont 12-7. Both winners are guaranteed a place in the final in Paris on 6 February 2027.
The All Blacks' 33-16 win at Ellis Park cost the Springboks 1.75 ranking points and earned New Zealand the same amount, putting them back at number one in the world on 94.03 points against 92.21. The 17-point margin was enough to collect the maximum available. It all goes again on Saturday in Cape Town.
A British judge ruled on Friday that the group action brought since 2020 by several hundred former players against World Rugby and the English and Welsh unions can proceed to trial. The claimants blame their neurological conditions on repeated concussions and accuse the governing bodies of failing to inform them of the risks.
Northland beat Canterbury 36-12 on Thursday night in Christchurch to take the Ranfurly Shield, which the province had not held since 1978, when it was known as North Auckland. The result is no fluke: after four rounds of the NPC, the Taniwha have the best attack and the best defence in the competition.
Stade Montois opened their first Nationale season with a bonus-point 47-0 win over Vienne on Friday night at Guy-Boniface. Seven tries, none conceded, and the armband handed to Nicolas Garrault, 35, who starts his eleventh season in the Landes with 192 games to his name before this fixture, coming off the worst year of his career.
Rassie Erasmus named his team on Thursday for the first Test against the All Blacks, on Saturday at Ellis Park. Siya Kolisi is not in it, and the head coach made clear that his captain was in fact available. Pieter-Steph du Toit takes the armband, Sacha Feinberg-Mngomezulu starts at fly-half, and Damian de Allende will become the tenth centurion in Springbok history.
Dave Rennie named his side on Thursday for the first of four Tests against the Springboks, on Saturday at Ellis Park. Ruben Love, with seven caps, starts at fly-half, Damian McKenzie at full-back, and the two players injured early in the tour, Will Jordan and Cam Roigard, are both in the starting XV. Beauden Barrett is not in the twenty-three.
English lock George Smith will not play the Pro D2 season with Nevers. At his request, his contract, which ran until 2027 with a one-year option, has been terminated and the player has returned to England, eight days before the league resumes.
Thomas Ramos will not be the only departure from Toulouse at the end of the season. Jérôme Cazalbou, head of elite rugby and a former scrum-half at the club, will also end his role in June. He wore the red and black shirt in the 1990s and won five caps for France.
The Nationale starts again this Friday for a season with no relegation battle: the FFR is expanding the league to sixteen clubs in 2027-2028, so no one will go down and two Nationale 2 clubs will come up. That leaves the race for Pro D2, where Carcassonne and Mont-de-Marsan start as favourites. Since 2021, only two clubs have gone back up after a single season at federal level.
The 2026-2027 Top 14 has 236 foreign-nationality players out of 598. But 77 of them came through French academies, starting with 23 of the league's 25 Georgians. Counting only players genuinely recruited from abroad, the total drops to 166 and Argentina move ahead of Fiji.
Anthony Jelonch, François Cros, Esteban Capilla, Marko Gazzotti and Pierre Bochaton all reach the end of their contracts in June 2027. Rugbyrama reports that the Gazzotti situation could move after that of Capilla, who is wanted by Toulouse, Bordeaux-Bègles and Toulon. Their numbers from last season point to two generations playing very different roles.
The Royal Moroccan Rugby Federation has appointed Bernard Goutta head coach of the Atlas Lions, a few months after he left US Carcassonne. The former USAP captain, who won a single cap for France, has been tasked with qualifying Morocco for a World Cup.
Kyren Taumoefolau scored five tries in thirty-one minutes on Sunday in the NPC. World Rugby's Regulation 8 allows a player born in the target country to switch nations after thirty-six months without playing international rugby. Born in Blenheim, the Tasman wing played his last match for Tonga on 8 October 2023: the countdown ends in seven weeks.
