A departure is first measured by what it takes away. Stade Toulousain played 33,595 Top 14 minutes last season with 56 players, scoring 1,080 points. Here is how much of those two totals belongs to the players whose future is already settled, and to those whose future is not.

Ramos, 14% of the points on his own

Thomas Ramos will join Racing 92 at the end of the season. In the Top 14 last year, the full-back played fifteen matches with twelve starts and 967 minutes, and scored 151 points.

Those 151 points represent 14% of Toulouse’s total for the season. The club is not short of options, though: Romain Ntamack scored 117 over the same period, just over three quarters of Ramos’s total. Between them, the two men scored a quarter of Toulouse’s points.

François Cros, expected at LOU, played nine Top 14 matches with seven starts, 611 minutes and 5 points. The back-rower’s value lies in minutes, not kicking.

Together, that is 24 matches, 19 starts, 1,578 minutes and 156 points, or 14.4% of the points and 4.7% of the minutes of the French champions.

Three open cases, and nothing signed

Three other senior players are reported by the press to be leaving, though no move has been made official to date.

According to Midi Olympique, Stade Français have offered a three-season contract to Emmanuel Meafou, whose deal runs out in June 2027. The lock played thirteen Top 14 matches last season, twelve of them starts, for 790 minutes and 20 points.

La Dépêche reports a three-year offer from Castres Olympique for Anthony Jelonch, who is also being tracked by Clermont. The back-rower has ten matches, nine starts, 648 minutes and 15 points.

Again according to Midi Olympique, Union Bordeaux-Bègles have made a move for David Ainu’u after ending their pursuit of Ntuthuko Mchunu. The prop played sixteen matches, seven of them starts, for 631 minutes and 5 points.

None of these three players has announced anything, and no club has made a statement. These remain press reports.

If all five left: 18% of the points, 11% of the minutes

Added together, the two confirmed departures and the three open cases represent 63 Top 14 matches, 47 starts, 3,647 minutes and 196 points over the 2025-2026 season.

That is 18.1% of the points and 10.9% of the minutes of a 56-player squad. One minute in nine and one point in five and a half.

The imbalance between the two columns comes down to one man: the three players reported to be leaving weigh more in minutes (6.2%) than the two confirmed departures (4.7%), but almost four times less in points (3.7% against 14.4%). Without the goal-kicker, losing a senior player costs playing time, not points.

A new generation already playing more than the thirty-somethings

The five players concerned had an average age of 29 on 1 January: François Cros 31, Thomas Ramos 30, Anthony Jelonch 29, Emmanuel Meafou 27, David Ainu’u 26.

On the other side, Stade Toulousain handed 6,105 of their 33,595 Top 14 minutes to players under 23, or 18.2%. Their players aged 30 and over played 5,665, or 16.9%. At the French champions, the youngsters played more than the veterans.

Eighteen players under 23 took the field during the season. Seven passed 380 minutes, four passed 600. Full-back Kalvin Gourgues, 20, is well clear at the top with 1,177 minutes in nineteen matches including thirteen starts, more than Ramos himself in the league. Lock Efrain Elias, 21, follows with 986 minutes and ten starts. Hooker Thomas Lacombre, 21, has 646.

In the positions affected by the departures, each already has an understudy: Gourgues at full-back, Elias at lock, Mathis Castro-Ferreira, 22, in the back row with 385 minutes, and prop Benjamin Bertrand, 22, with 396. On average, seven years separate the departing players from these four.

Two caveats, and they matter. If Gourgues played more than Ramos in the league, it is also because the international was with France, five matches and 400 minutes over the same period. And the next generation has not stayed intact: Paul Costes, 942 minutes at centre aged 22, joined Racing 92 this summer.

The balance sheet, in minutes and points

On one side, 3,647 minutes and 196 Top 14 points that are leaving or could leave, carried by five players with an average age of 29.

On the other, 6,105 minutes already played last season by players under 23, 2,944 of them by the four who play exactly the positions affected.

The loss is concentrated in one area, goal-kicking: Ramos alone accounts for 77% of the points of the five potential departures. The rest is minutes, and Toulouse have already given more of those to their youngsters than to their thirty-somethings.

What the club loses is therefore clear. What it gains is less so: nothing says a younger squad plays better, and these figures only measure time spent on the pitch, not what happened there.

The lowest percentage in the Top 14, but a reason to be wary of it

That 16.9% of minutes given to players aged 30 and over is the lowest percentage in the league. UBB follow at 18.4%, Bayonne at 20.8%. At the other end, Montauban gave 46.1% of their playing time to thirty-somethings, almost one minute in two, Toulon 37.8% and Montpellier 35.1%.

This ranking needs a caveat, however, and a big one. Toulouse’s eight thirty-somethings played 1,860 minutes for France over the same period, on top of their 5,665 club minutes. Thomas Ramos had 640, Julien Marchand 412, François Cros 330, Dorian Aldegheri 287, Rodrigue Neti 191. Their low league playing time therefore does not only reflect a coaching choice: it also reflects the fact that they were elsewhere. A club that supplies few internationals keeps its veterans all season, and its percentage automatically goes up.

In the under-23 bracket, on the other hand, Toulouse are only sixth: Pau lead the way with 28.9%, ahead of La Rochelle (25.1%), Toulon (19.6%), Clermont (19.3%) and UBB (19.1%). Castres are bottom at 6%.

Only three clubs play their under-23s more than their players aged 30 and over: Pau, UBB and Stade Toulousain, the last two being precisely among the biggest suppliers of players to France. The core of the Toulouse squad lies elsewhere, in the 26-30 age group, who accounted for 48.1% of playing time.

This is not a squad that needs rebuilding. It is a squad moving up a generation.

Method

Ages are calculated at 1 January 2026, the middle of the season. The figures cover the 2025-2026 Top 14 only, regular season and knockout stage, excluding European competition and international matches. Across both club competitions combined, Thomas Ramos rises to 21 matches, 1,447 minutes and 223 points. A club knocked out before the knockout stage automatically has 31,200 minutes to share out, against just over 33,500 for a finalist: calculating in percentages cancels out that difference.