Last Friday Fabien Galthié revealed his new back room staff to the media and led training at the Pic Saint-Loup club near Montpellier.

The Rugby Club Saint-Gély Pic Saint-Loup is made up of volunteers, and aims to be a continuation of the Pic Saint-Loup Rugby School allowing young players reaching the age limit of educational rugby a space to continue their favourite sport in a setting that respects their training, their desires, and their school or professional curriculum.

Fabien Galthié took advantage of his back-to-school press conference in Saint-clément-de-rivière to present his new assistants, Patrick Arlettaz and Laurent Sempéré, as well as Nicolas Jeanjean who has benefitted from a rise in rank.

Karim Ghezal and Laurent Labit have left the coaching set up to join Stade Francais and Thibault Giroud is now at Bordeaux.

Laurent Sempéré and Patrick Arlettaz are therefore the two new boys and Nicolas Jeanjean, has switched roles to become performance coach.

Galthie announced “I really took the time to make the decisions, because I had a lot of them. I took the best, each in their fields, each in their teams. I felt in them a great motivation, a great strength. I felt the obvious too. Their history, potential, talent and passion. ”

Laurent Sempéré joins from Stade Francais and will work William Servat who retains his position as scrum coach.

The Catalan Patrick Arlettaz arrives as attack coach with a view to making the French team as efficient as possible when they get the ball.

Nicolas Jeanjean the former French international was already part of the “performance” team and now Fabien Galthié has given him an internal promotion to compensate for Thibault Giroud’s departure. “I saw him evolve, I saw him grow, I also trained him,” Fabien Galthié said about him. “He has been here for six years already, it is an internal promotion. ”

Interestingly these men already know each other well. Galthié played against Arlettaz many times over a ten year period, Laurent Sempéré and Nicolas Jeanjean were also his team mates during his playing days at Stade Francais.

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Galthié used this opportunity at Saint-Gély Pic Saint-Loup as a training session for his coaches.

Preparation time for the opening match of the 2024 Guinness Six Nations will be very limited, France face Ireland in Marseille on Friday 1st February.

As part of that preparation the coaching team will meet up next week at Marcoussis for a training course from Monday to Tuesday, followed by a working seminar from Wednesday to Thursday.

This will be an opportunity for the coaches to train with the France U20 world champions and implement the training model they will use for the senior squad.