Yannick JAUZION

Biog of Yannick JAUZION :

In July 2001 Yannick Jauzion, not yet 23 and coming off the back of his first tour with the French team, declared that he was not sure whether he would one day want to be 100% professional. A student at the Ecole Supérieure d’Agriculture de Purpan, Jauzion had just completed his first season with first division Colomiers. He was already the tree trunk he is today, as tall as a second row, arms as thick as a normal person’s legs, but he still had the humility born of the earth stuck to his boots, blind to the fact that he would become one of the best centres in the world.

With time, though, he came to understand that he held in his hands the talent of an artist grafted onto the body of a removal man: 1.93m and 95kg at the start of his career, 106kg today. “His body shape in his position is a paradox,” Zeba Traoré, Jauzion’s fitness trainer at Toulouse, says on the subject, “but he has managed to develop the athletic resources to ally speed, finesse and technical know-how.” He has become the prototype of the perfect centre, adapting the way he plays to the game, just as Philippe Sella, his role model, did so capably before him. He can find the gap or take the ball into contact to suck in the opposition, often off-loading, even with two or three players on his back. “He always keeps the ball alive,” sums up his trainer at Colomiers, Jean-Pierre Cariat.

Since 2001, the shy Jauzion who, at the age of 17, looked behind him to see who was being addressed when his promotion to the first team at Graulhet was announced, has won 70 caps, scored 20 international tries (tenth highest scorer in history, third currently playing) and played in two Grand Slams (2004 and 2010) and two World Cup semi-finals (2003 and 2007). But all of this happened almost by accident, or so it might seem, as Jauzion did not see rugby as his future. What really interested him was a diploma in engineering (obtained in 2003), agriculture - that world within a world, the family farm at Venès (Tarn), and the sheep’s milk produced for the Roquefort caves. Dare we say that rugby decided differently, and Toulouse in particular?

Yannick Jauzion broke through definitively in 2003 at the end of his first season with Toulouse, during which he had already won a European title and reached the French championship final. As a late developer he had learnt not to try to batter his way through because he was not big enough, and he now found in the Toulouse playing-style inspired by Guy Novès and Philippe Rougé-Thomas the conditions to fulfil his potential. In the summer of 2003 he exploded onto the scene for good, pushing Damien Traille (a permanent fixture for the last 24 matches) onto the bench and becoming the second starting centre in the French team, alongside Tony Marsh, for the World Cup to be held in Australia. “You have five minutes to get pumped up,” Bernard Laporte, the coach at the time, would slip in before the games. Calm, Jauzion showed no emotion. Nevertheless he scored a hat trick in the opening match against Fiji. From that time on, apart from through injury (depriving him of the 2006 Grand Slam, for example) or a temporary drop in fitness levels, he has hardly missed an international for France, playing between six and ten per season.

In 2004 (Grand Slam, European final with Toulouse) and 2005 (victories against Australia and South Africa, European cup with Toulouse) he became, in the view of his peers and despite the number of games he was playing - as many as 41 top class matches per season! – the best centre in the world, the equal of All Black, Tana Umaga. Meanwhile his centre partner at club level kept changing (Garbajosa, Desbrosse, Fritz, Kunavore, David) and for France as well (10 including Glas, Traille, Marsh, Marty, Fritz and Bastareaud). He accumulated domestic and European titles (French championship 2008, European Cup 2010, European final 2008), and international honours too. But there were a few stunning reversals along the way (2003 World Cup semi-final against England, New Zealand in France in 2004 and 2006, and against Australia very recently).

The 2007 World Cup was another cup of tea. There was magic, like the victory in the quarter-final against New Zealand (in his sixth game against the All Blacks!) and his sixteenth try in French colours that evening. There were defeats, in the opening match and the semi-final. But Jauzion, indispensible pillar of the Toulouse and French back lines, seems to bridge eras. Lièvremont, like Laporte before him and Novès at Toulouse, cannot do without Jauzion, to the point that he could easily be heading to the 2011 World Cup despite his 32 years. A better user of the ball has yet to be found.