When the draw for the Champions Cup pools was made Leinster and Leicester in Pool One he must have been relieved. They avoided the big boys from the Top 14: no Bordeaux, no Toulouse, no La Rochelle and no Racing.
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This quartet has appeared in at least one of the last seven Champions Cup finals. And, of course, there is Montpellier, who beat Ulster 59-26 in last season’s Challenge Cup final.
Two French clubs in Pool One – which also contains Sale Sharks and Glasgow Warriors – they are Clermont and Pau. Ten years ago Clermont was a European power, losing in the final to Toulon 2013 and 2015 Those days are a distant memory for a club that did not compete Top 14 semi-final of this decade.
As for Pau – who host Leicester on Sunday – the last of their Top 14 titles was in 1964; the only silverware they have won since then was Challenge Cup 2000. The following season they reached the quarter-finals of the then Heineken Cup – and did not appear in the tournament again until last season.
The 21st century has not been kind to Pau. They were relegated to ProD2 at the end of the 2005–06 season and took a decade to return to the Top 14. For the next few years, they were tied for survival; they were scarred from numerous relegation dogfights but somehow avoided the drop.
The turning point was in the summer of 2021 when the then 43-year-old Sébastien Piqueronies was appointed manager.
He found a club in decline with little vision and little ambition. But that’s why Piqueronies was hired. Pau wanted him to do to their club what he did France U20s.
When the former PE teacher took over ‘Les Bleuets’ for the 2017-18 season, they had never won a world championship in their age group. They won it in 2018, winning England in the final, and the following year France U20 retained the title against Australia. They could have made it a hat-trick of wins in 2020 had Covid not caused the tournament to be cancelled.
In an interview that year, Piqueronies reflected on those back-to-back titles: “For two years they were competing against the best in the world and realized they were more than their match,” he said. However, he added, it was crucial to build a pathway for this gifted generation from junior to senior rugby. “Our work on succession planning must allow us to ensure the long-term sustainability of this player’s development,” Piqueronies said.
If they succeed (win the World Cup), the core of the team will at some point be developed under the Piqueronies: Ramos, Ntamack, Marchand, Woki, Brennan, Gros, Bemba, Barassi and Antoine Dupont.
‘It is a process that we started some time ago with the youth teams and I believe that we are now reaping the fruits of that work…we are at a stage that will lay the foundations for the sustainability of our results.’
Piqueronies’ faith was not misplaced. Six years later, France are the dominant nation in the northern hemisphere and probably the only European team capable of winning the World Cup in 2027. If they do, the core of the team will at some point be developed under the Piqueronies: Ramos, Ntamack, Marchand, Woki, Brennan, Gros, Bemba, Barassi and Antoine Dupont.
Piqueronies developed some of these players when he was in charge Toulouse youth academy fifteen years ago. Tomas Ramos was one. “I simply have to mention Sebastien Piqueronies, who was my head coach,” he recalled this time. ‘He trusted me and helped me improve enormously over three years. In that period, from the age of 15 to 18, I owe him a lot, not least because he helped me build my confidence.’
This is the key to Piqueronies. He is not only a top coach, he is also a nurturer, drawing on his experience as a PE teacher to bring out the best in players technically and emotionally.
These are attributes he used to great effect at Pau. They are no longer whipping boys. Last season, the club whose background is the Pyrenees finished fourth, making it to the playoffs for the first time in 26 years.
This season, as the Top 14 take a break for Europe, Pau are second, tucked behind Toulouse with five wins from six matches. Not bad for a club whose budget is 33.9 million euros, almost half of Toulouse’s 60.8 million euros.
Piqueronies has assembled a team that combines youth and experience. Among his early signings were England half-back duo Dan Robson and Joe Simmonds, and All Black Sam Whitelock, who joined his brother Luke, and with the arrival of 2019.
Other great talents have emerged in recent seasons, including Fabien Brau-Boirie and Aaron Grandidier-Nkangan, who both featured against France.
Robson signed in the fall of 2022 Wasps went into administration. The England scrum-half had a host of offers from Premiership clubs but he jumped ship for Pau. “I got a call from Pau, we had a zoom with them,” he explained at the time. ‘I was impressed with the head coach.’
Alongside these wise heads were players still in their teens: Théo Attissogbe, Hugo Auradou Emilien Gailleton, Axel Despérès and Clément Mondinat. Other great talents have emerged in recent seasons, including Fabien Brau-Boirie and Aaron Grandidier-Nkangan, who both featured against France.
In a recent interview with Midi Olympique, Piqueronies elaborated on what he said in 2020 about building an efficient path. “We have to anticipate and coordinate the emergence of these young talents,” he said. “We no longer wait for a player to turn 21 to assess his potential. We take risks. We bet on a 17-year-old and take a bold gamble, with concrete support measures.”
It is about trust in the young, he added. “Exceptional young players can only emerge if they fight against the best. Otherwise, they will never reach the highest level.”
No one in the Top 14 deals with youth more than Piqueronies. It was he who saw something in Aaron Grandidier-Nkanango that no one had during his upbringing in England. So Piqueronies made his move and now the Londoner plays for France. “I was lucky to have Seb who offered me the opportunity to come to Pau,” said Grandidier-Nkanang after his first appearance in the summer. “I want to thank the staff at Pau. They didn’t give up on me. In some clubs I might have been on the sidelines. But they gave me a chance.”
Believing in youth, the Piqueronies turned Pau into a new French power.
