We forgot how hard this man can hit.
Most of us are familiar with Mathieu Bastareaud, the French rugby player who defies all logic when it comes to playing in the centre.
You would think the player would be more suited to playing as a prop with the Frenchman weighing in somewhere between 111 – 120 kg (17.5 – 19 stone), depending on where you get your statistics.
To put that into context, according to Leinster Rugby, Robbie Henshaw and Garry Ringrose both weigh in at 95 kg and 92 Kg respectively, which is about 15-25 kg less than Bastareaud.
Although Bastareaud does have negatives associated with his size, stamina being one of them, when the man builds up a bit of speed he is almost impossible to bring down, as Ronan O’Gara’s Racing 92 found out at the beginning of the month.
tut tut tut pic.twitter.com/E2wkFYnbQN
— Philou (@philousports) January 1, 2017
Well its not just ball in hand which should have opponents worried, he is also capable of putting in monstrous hits, which poor Alex Lozowski of Saracens recently found out.
The uncapped 23-year-old who has been named in Eddie Jones’ squad for the Six Nations was representing his club at the weekend in their match against fellow heavyweights, Toulon.
Unfortunately for Lozowski, he was met with nasty surprise as he tried to evade a tackle, a fully primed Bastareaud.
From another angle…
Thankfully, Ireland haven’t been on the receiving end of any of these hits lately as Bastareaud hasn’t played for his country since France’s humbling to New Zealand at the 2015 World Cup.
He has been drafted into Guy Noves’ squad for the upcoming Six Nations however, as France have suffered a number of injuries in midfield with Henry Chavancy and Wesley Fofana both ruled out.
Ireland play France in the Aviva Stadium in Round 3 of this year’s tournament so we may well see powerful centre strut his stuff in Dublin.
