Thomas CASTAIGNEDE

Biog of Thomas CASTAIGNEDE :

On 4 November 2000, Thomas Castaignède collapsed in the dead-ball area at the Stade de France. “Who kicked me?” Castaignède shouted out, clutching the back of his leg. The French team were warming up just before the match against Australia. Castaignède would not play in the match - he had ruptured his Achilles tendon. It was the start of a difficult 18 months for Castaignède, entailing four operations. The ordeal split his career in two. In March 2006 he stated, moreover, “I thought I might never walk properly again, so I’m happy to be able to run as fast as I can.” And at the age of 31, despite his problems, Castaignède could still run 50 metres in less than six seconds.

Castaignède had to wait two years after his injury before he was next selected for France and from then on he was never a permanent fixture in the team. In 2006 he played at fullback in France’s victorious Six Nations campaign… and that was more or less the end of Castaignède’s international adventure, an adventure that would end in disappointment in July 2007 (with only four more selections but a total, nevertheless, of 54 caps and 252 points including 18 tries) when he was overlooked for a second time for a World Cup (the first being in 2003). “My sporting life is over,” he declared. Castaignède had made the World Cup in France his last objective having already retired from club rugby. The competition just did not smile kindly on Castaignède. In 1999 he had been forced to stand down after injuring himself in the first match.

Castaignède was nicknamed “the little prince”, like Didier Codorniou before him, because of his diminutive size (1.75m) and silky skills. With his angelic face, he was the only French rugby star capable of playing at fly-half (20 caps), centre (19) and fullback (10) with equal ease, or of lighting up a match as he did in the encounter against Wales at Wembley on 5 April 1998 (0-51), the fourth round of a Grand Slam in which Castaignède played the entirety at fly-half. Capable also, on the eve of his 21st birthday, of scoring the drop goal that sealed the first French victory over England in the Five Nations tournament in eight years and of demonstrating his composure and pleasure by sticking out his tongue. It was 20 January 1996 at the Parc des Princes. “Little Boni”, as he was also known, in reference to his illustrious predecessor in the French team, André Boniface (who like Castaignède had also played for Stade Montois), had taken over from a certain Philippe Sella in the Tricolore centre.

Two weeks before this drop kick Castaignède had won the first European Cup in rugby history with Toulouse, beating Cardiff in the final. He left Mont-de-Marsan in 1992 to join Toulouse, the club that was to break so many records. Castaignède would contribute to this success, playing in the team that won four successive Brennus Shields from 1994-1997 (and the European Cup mentioned above). In 1997 he left Toulouse for Castres staying there until 2000 but won nothing with them. Next, on to Saracens in London where, in addition to receiving unwavering support during his injury problems (he received a full salary even though Saracens were not compensated by the French Federation, and was even rewarded with a contract extension), Castaignède tasted life in the English capital where he still lives today. On the sporting side for Saracens, he had more lows than highs but happily reached the semi-finals of the Championship for his farewell bow.

“In the end, Thomas never had the international career for France that his early years promised,” writes Fabien Pelous in 118 vies, his autobiography. “Destiny played its part but was not the only reason. Tom made some debateable sporting choices in leaving Toulouse for Castres and then Saracens. Maybe sport wasn’t his priority. I can respect that. But if he had stayed at Toulouse he might well have been the most-capped French international, and not me…”

Thomas Castaignède, who obtained a diploma in engineering at the Institut National des Sciences Appliquées in Toulouse at the same time as playing, works today in the City of London for Icap, a subsidiary of the UBS group that specialises in intermediation between financial operators. He is also a rugby pundit for Canal+.