Huget, Tilsley, Martins: Agen’s production line of serial try scorers

SU Agen will lose Lucas Martins in June 2027, when he heads to Castres on a three-season deal. The Tarn club is signing the top try scorer from the last championship, and that is the number everyone remembers. But go back through twenty years of Pro D2 and something else emerges: Agen keep producing wings who finish top of the list, and some of them went a very long way afterwards.

Three times in twenty years

Since 2005, three SU Agen players have finished as Pro D2’s top try scorer. No other club appears at the top of that list as often.

The first was Yoann Huget. Fourteen tries in 2008-2009 in an Agen shirt, before he moved on, became an international and won the Brennus with Toulouse. The second is George Tilsley, also with fourteen tries, in 2016-2017. The third is Lucas Martins, with seventeen last season.

Three different profiles, one position, one club. Agen may have strung together difficult seasons, but they keep producing finishers that other clubs come looking for.

Scoring lots of tries is the job description

Before getting carried away by a total, it is worth restating something the raw number hides: a wing is paid to finish moves. Last season in Pro D2, nine wings scored ten tries or more. No other position comes close, with hookers next on six thanks to driving mauls.

So the total on its own says little. What really sets a finisher apart is his strike rate per match.

Read that way, the ranking changes. Martins and Hulleu share the same total of seventeen tries, but the Agen wing did it in eight fewer matches, which puts him well ahead on strike rate. Costa Storti, meanwhile, remains in a category of his own: more than a try per match over a season, something nobody else has managed in twenty years.

Two more points. Ratuvou and Matanavou were not wings but centres, which makes their totals more remarkable than those of the wide men. And Martins was twenty-two when he produced his season. That, more than the total, is where the promise lies.

Caucaunibuca, a comparison that needs qualifying

Rupeni Caucaunibuca’s name has come up everywhere, since the Fijian also wore the Agen shirt. The comparison needs correcting.

His seventeen tries in 2005-2006 were indeed scored for Agen, but in the Top 14, in twenty-three matches. In Pro D2, where he later returned with the same club, his best total topped out at thirteen tries in 2009-2010, after twelve the season before.

The picture of two extraordinary wings passing through Lot-et-Garonne twenty years apart still holds. The two totals simply do not come from the same division.

Why Castres moved quickly

CO did not just buy a number, they filled a gap. Last season in the Top 14, no Castres wing scored more than seven tries, and the seven players used on the wings and at full-back scored twenty-six times between them.

Nobody can guarantee that a Pro D2 finisher will make the step up. But Castres identified the position where they produce least, found the player who produces most at his level, and signed him a year before anyone else could make a move. The rest will be decided on the pitch, in 2027.