Damian Penaud is a throwback maverick.
His ambivalence about training has been noted by team-mates and coaches. His indifference about defence is frequently obvious on the pitch. Whatever tactics his team are working too, he is liable to shred those plans as soon as the whistle blows.
When he passed up several seemingly obvious chances to score in the win over Northampton 10 days ago, throwing unnecessary passes to team-mates instead, a theory emerged.
Having scored 14 tries – a record for a single edition of the tournament – en route to a Champions Cup triumph last season, Penaud was amusing himself by trying to set a new landmark for try assists in this campaign.
Bordeaux-Begles head coach Yannick Bru’s, perhaps tongue-in-cheek, comments about Penaud chasing ‘different trophies’ fuelled the conspiracy.
Coaches have put up with Penaud’s amateur-era eccentricities because, at his best, he is one of the finest wings in the modern game. A galloping, long-striding runner with a nose for a gap and the ability to confound a defence with the unexpected.
When that form runs dry though, patience can quickly wear thin.
Fabien Galthie is a very different character to Penaud. When Penaud’s lacklustre, butter-fingered performance (among several of his team-mates’) cost France against England in last year’s Six Nations, the wing was unceremoniously dropped for the following round against Italy. Penaud returned, and scored, in the championship-defining win over Ireland.
This season though, without a rich run of try-scoring form to press his case, he finds himself on the outside.
Theo Attisogbe, who took Penaud’s place last year when it was up for grabs and scored three tries in two Six Nations games, looks most likely to team up with Louis Bielle-Biarrey and Thomas Ramos in the back three.
Just as interesting will be Penaud’s reaction. He will take heart from Bordeaux-Begles team-mate Mathieu Jalibert, who turned down a call-up for Galthie in November 2024 feeling he was undervalued as a back-up option.
That could have been the end of an international career. But Jalibert’s fine form has won over Galthie and he is most likely to start the tournament at 10.
Can Penaud show the same hunger to regain his shirt?
