Racing 92 have lost a player in pre-season, and not just any player. Léo Carbonneau, 21, has ruptured his cruciate ligaments. He will be out for months, three weeks before the Top 14 resumes. The club had long since tied up the signing of the scrum-half who has worn their jersey more than anyone else in the position over the past decade.

The most used of the five

Carbonneau was not just a squad rotation option. Of the five scrum-halves Racing fielded last season, he played the most: 28 matches, ahead of Maxent Georgelin (17), Antoine Latrasse (15), Kleo Labarbe (10) and Simon Moreau (6). In his first season in the Paris region, the former Brive player had made the position his own.

He joined from Brive, where he played 55 matches between 2022 and 2025, and also won 15 caps for France Under-20 across the 2022 and 2023 campaigns. He turns 22 in October.

Machenaud: ten seasons and a Brennus

Maxime Machenaud, meanwhile, is returning to familiar ground. Between 2012 and 2021, he played 236 matches in the sky blue and white, over ten consecutive seasons. He won the Bouclier de Brennus there in 2016 and played in three European Cup finals, in 2016, 2018 and 2020.

His spell at Bayonne, from 2022 to 2025, ended with a season of just six matches. At 37, he is not coming back as an obvious starter, but Carbonneau’s injury reshuffles the pecking order before a ball has been kicked.

Four men for one position

Racing start the season with four scrum-halves in their professional squad: Carbonneau, Machenaud, Latrasse, who has just turned 19, and Georgelin. With the first of them sidelined, the workload falls on a 37-year-old returnee, a 19-year-old and a third man who played 17 times last year.