If you think Thibaud Flament is busy on the pitch, you should see him work the Buenos Aires coffee scene.
In 2017, the then 20-year-old arrived in Argentina’s capital with one contact, no job and no idea where he would sleep that night.
He had come from Loughborough University. The fellow students on Flament’s international business degree course had been through a battery of interviews and assessments to secure high-flying internships.
Flament’s goals were different. He had told Loughborough’s placement office he was going to Argentina to play rugby.
“They were a bit surprised – it’s not really the point of the course,” the France second row tells BBC Sport.
Undaunted, Flament found a club, bought a ticket and took the plunge.
Marcos Ayerza, the former Leicester prop, picked him up at Buenos Aires airport early on Saturday morning and took him to a Club Newman game. At the post-match barbeque, one of his new team-mates sorted him a room.
But Flament still had no income.
“I was trying to get into every expat network in Buenos Aires – the private French schools, the French Embassy staff, the French chamber of commerce,” Flament remembers.
“I snuck into events, got myself invited to some places, I even went to coffee mornings with the partners of expatriates who were working in Buenos Aires. All basically to find a job.
“Then, one day, at an event this man came up to me.
“He said, ‘I’ve heard so much about you, everywhere I go, everyone tells me that there is this guy looking for a job – he’s young, he’s trying everything. You know what? It’s fine, I’m taking you. You’ll be the next intern.'”
Flament had been handed a plum job at the French Embassy.
“I said to him, ‘Do you want my CV or something?'” Flament remembers.
It is a constant running through a unique rugby CV.
