French flair and true grit form a heady combination

Individual brilliance

Racing 92 have players who can grab seven-pointers from thin air.

Leone Nakarawa is close to impossible to defend against at times. The lock is massive, the greatest ball carrier and offloader of them all, and has the quite extraordinary talent to carry the ball in his gargantuan hands as if it were a tennis ball. His length of stride keeps him on his feet, and it often looks like opposition players are Lilliputians trying to down him. And then he has an arm like Mr Fantastic.

Teddy Thomas is a flying winger. His running style is so smooth: no hard accelerations, more like whispering death as he leaves you trailing in the dirt. And Virimi Vakata wa has morphed from wing to centre to devastating effect. The second a defence is stretched, and scrambling to the wide spaces to close the space down, he jags back and is in behind you and away.

Line-out presence

Racing have a bucketful of variety in the aerial combat arena to secure solid ball and secure a platform. They go to any line-out with five jumpers, and they all get in the air with real quality.

I have spoken of Nakarawa, but there is also his fellow lock Donnacha Ryan, formerly of Munster, and the back row of Wenceslas Lauret, Bernard le Roux and Yannick Nyanga, whose jumping ability belongs in an international sandpit. The No 8 and flankers are all serious international quality on their day. All five can be an option for Camille Chat. They also go after the opposition line-out because they really do trust the men who stay on the ground to combat the drive if they are beaten to the ball. This gives them a real ability to steal your ball from the front to the back.

Ferocious chop tacklers

There is an element of the old-school French team about these guys. At the heart of it is an ability to chop tackle and compete. You would tend to associate a side of this size with a choke tackle, or chest tackle and a love of trying to wrestle. But Racing 92 get you on the deck super quick and have mongrels at the breakdown.

The front row are super mobile. Chat, Eddy Ben Arous and Cedate Gomes Sa are back-rowers in props’ clothing. Lauret, Le Roux, and Nyanga have got real skills when it comes to knee tackling, with awesome flexibility to get their big shoulder low and accelerating into contact. At 12 there is a home-grown lad, Henry Chavancy, who will tackle a bus for his team.