mens
nations-championship
France they suffered another big blow in front of them Nations Championship campaign, with Toulouse lock Thibaud Flament is out for a few weeks with a shoulder injury, French outlet The team have reported.
The 29-year-old played the full 80 minutes in Toulouse’s 45-34 win Top 14 to conquer Bayonne on Sunday, but has been sidelined ever since, with The team reporting that the issue will keep him out of the French program in November.
That means Fabien Galthié will be without Flament and Emmanuel Meafou – arguably his favorite back-row partner – for the upcoming Tests against Fiji, South Africa and Argentina, as well as the final weekend of the Nations Championship at the end of the month.
The timing is particularly damaging ahead of the November 13 meeting with the Springboks in Paris, which France will see as one of the defining games of their Nations Championship campaign with a view to next year’s World Cup.
Meafou is already expected to miss the autumn after suffering a knee injury last month, leaving Galthié without a second-row pair expected to anchor his pack against the world champions.
Flament’s absence is also a big setback for Toulouse, who are starting their own Investec Champions Cup campaign this weekend. The French champions face off Exeter Chiefs on Sunday and will now head to Europe without Flament, Meafou and Clément Vergé, further stretching their resources in the second row.
Toulouse performance manager Jérôme Cazalbou said this week that Flament had been rested with a shoulder problem, but the latest reports suggest the problem is more significant than first indicated.
France already face uncertainty elsewhere in the squad, with Bordeaux-Begles fly-half Matthieu Jalibert also sidelined with a thigh injury and facing a race to return to the start of the Nations Championship.
For Galti, the loss of Flamento represents an increasingly difficult build-up to November, especially with a powerful South African pack looming in Paris.
