Aristide Barraud, 34, is a former rugby player. A fly-half who trained at RC Massy, he notably played for Stade Français and the French U20 team. He suffered a gunshot wound during the attacks in Paris on November 13, 2015, which forced him to end his career at the age of 26. He has since immersed himself in writing, art and photography.

"I don't understand anything about scrummaging, and I'd rather say it flat out before I start. But I've seen a lot of scrums, some of them very close up. Stable ones, beautiful ones and others that end badly. But what happens between the two front rows is an unknown world, a world apart. You only enter it if you're part of it, like Harry Potter with Platform 9¾.

I shared a flat with a prop at the Stade Français training center. During our tête-à-tête dinners, he would try to explain the positioning and binding to me, the various angles of thrust to subdue your opposite number. It's really about domination, a physical domination where strength alone is not enough. It's a collective effort, coordinated by a multitude of signals perceived only by the players.

I love props and I think I understand them. I admire their love of combat, their sense of sacrifice and their humility in accomplishing thankless tasks. Incidentally, "taking one for the team" was my first conversation with Cyril Baille – you have the best philosophical discussions with props. It was in Rome in early spring, the season when starlings form clouds in the sky: synchronized clouds of tens of thousands of birds, as dense as a scrum.

At that time, Cyril was not yet considered the best loose-head prop in the world. We talked about physical pain, what you show and what you keep to yourself. I liked him right away, and that's no mean feat. With the number of people we meet in our lives, to think that you're comfortable in a few minutes with a stranger gives you faith in the future. Maybe it was his gentle gaze and steely mentality. I'd like to point out that I've met people who have the opposite effect, and it's rarely admirable. In short, admiring someone is a complex mix of what we don't know about them and what we think we know about them. It's a set of imperceptible signals, exactly like a scrum, perfectly coordinated as it moves forward. Eight bodies in motion, giving the impression of forming another, independent body. Like clouds of birds in the summer sky.

We write to each other from time to time, only through the ups and downs, and about his titles, and my books. In our great joys and wanderings, we offer support for wounds and joy for births. For, in recent years, as well as taking one for the team and racking up titles with the Stade Toulousain, he has become a father. He told me that, with his baby born a few days before the test match against the Springboks last November, the connection was powerful at first sight.

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