France: the 33 are secret, here are the 63

A week spent counting Toulouse players, arguing about who was left out and judging the age of the group. Then the federation said the list was wrong.

A week of analysis on a list that may not be one

It all started on Sunday 13 September. The names of the thirty-three internationals whose workload will be managed this season appeared in the press, led by thirteen Toulouse players, and French rugby finally had something to read the day after a round of league games.

On Monday, the list took up all the space. People counted the clubs: six from Bordeaux, three from La Rochelle, three from Pau. They were surprised by the age of the group and the room left for players in their thirties. They wondered about the absentees, Alldritt and Lucu first among them, and one editorial asked whether everyone would end up losing something. We took part in that work like everyone else, with figures to back it up.

On Tuesday came the explanations of how the scheme works, somewhere between performance and player welfare. On Wednesday, it emerged that it obliges nobody to do anything: no club will be sanctioned for not resting a player, as long as it can explain why.

On Thursday, the French Rugby Federation called time on the exercise. “The lists that have been published in the press are wrong,” its vice-president Jean-Marc Lhermet told L’Équipe. The real names will stay confidential, precisely so that the group is not read as a World Cup shortlist or as a ranking of the best French players. “This list is not an end in itself, it is a means.”

A week of analysis, then, on a document nobody can vouch for any more. One list does escape the denial, because it does not rely on any leak: the sixty-three players who actually wore the blue jersey last season. The thirty-three are bound to be among them, and the full list is below.

Eleven matches, sixty-three players

Between 8 November 2025 and 18 July 2026, France played eleven matches: four autumn Tests, five Six Nations games and three on the summer tour.

The columns below give the number of France matchday squads across those eleven matches, the number of starts, and total playing time for the 2025-26 season, adding up Top 14, European cup and international games. The club is the one for the current season.

What the list says on its own

Toulouse supply seventeen, more than a quarter. With Bordeaux-Bègles and their twelve, the two clubs account for twenty-nine players, almost half the total. Pau have seven, La Rochelle and Toulon five each. At the other end, Perpignan and Vannes have not supplied a single France international.

The disputed scheme says a protected player should not be named in more than nine matchday squads out of twelve with France. Oscar Jegou and Emmanuel Meafou have already been in nine out of eleven. They had hit the ceiling now being debated before it even existed.

Twenty-six players won only one or two caps. The renewal is real, and it happened mostly on the summer tour.

What this table does not say: injuries

None of these columns measures a career or a player’s standing with the head coach, and that is the trap in every reading published this week. A low total often tells the story of a spell in the treatment room.

Antoine Dupont is the clearest example. Five caps out of eleven, all between 5 February and 14 March. Injured since the 2025 Six Nations, he had not played a single game since 8 March 2025 when he returned to the pitch on 29 November, so he missed the whole autumn series. He then saw his club’s season through to the end, a semi-final on 19 June and a winning final against Montpellier on the 27th, before pulling out of the summer tour injured. His 1,251 minutes do not describe a player who was managed, they describe a player who was stopped twice.

The same goes for François Cros, five caps and only seventeen games, the lowest total on this list among the regular forwards, or for Paul Boudehent, eighteen games. Conversely, Cyril Baille does not appear in this table at all: troubled by an ankle, he has not worn the blue jersey since 15 March 2025 and lost eight kilos this summer to get back to his best.

Caps and minutes do not tell the same story

The other gap comes from club rugby. A player can have few caps and still have played a huge amount, and that is exactly what the scheme claims to monitor.

Grégory Alldritt has two caps, but twenty-nine games and 2,043 minutes in all competitions, the sixth-highest playing time on this whole list, ahead of Jegou, ahead of Ntamack, ahead of almost every player named on Sunday. Antoine Hastoy, one cap, has 1,830. Gaël Dréan, one cap, 1,831.

Conversely, Peato Mauvaka has six caps for only 809 minutes, and Rodrigue Neti seven caps without a single start. Counting caps and counting minutes produce two different rankings, and only the second one says anything about workload.

What this table says about the disowned list

Twenty-eight of these sixty-three players have at least five caps. Twenty-five of them are on the list published on Sunday. For a document the federation says is wrong, the match is high.

The three missing are Hugo Auradou, eight caps but only one start, Baptiste Serin, five caps and no starts, and Maxime Lucu, six caps including five starts. The first two are finishers, coming off the bench almost every time. The third is the only regular France starter missing from that list.

Two players who are not in it at all

The published list also contains names missing from our sixty-three. Grégoire Arfeuil and Ugo Seunes have no caps, neither last season nor before.

This is where the federation has a point, and it needs saying. If the document is genuine, it is neither a ranking of the best French players right now nor a World Cup shortlist, since it includes players who have never been called up. It looks ahead, to those the federation wants to protect or see emerge, which is exactly what Jean-Marc Lhermet means when he talks about a means rather than an end.

The real list will reveal itself

The scheme provides for one weekend off per block of four games, in the Top 14 as in the Champions Cup, and nine France matchday squads out of twelve between 1 July 2026 and 30 June 2027. No sanction is planned, only an explanation to be given.

An international rested one weekend in four is noticeable. A player missing from a matchday squad in November can be counted. The names are confidential until the first block of four rounds. After that, reading the team sheets will be enough.