A tribute to Dimitri Yachvili: the original Le Petit General
Dimitri Yachvili kicks for goal during the 2011 Rugby World Cup in New Zealand
Credit: Icon Sport
Many different sports teams and countries are synonymous with producing certain types of players.
When you think of West Indies cricket, their fearsome battery of fast bowlers during the 1980s - Andy Roberts, Malcolm Marshall, Joel Garner and Michael Holding - spring to mind.
In football, Italy is the home of defensive masters like Franco Baresi, Paolo Maldini, Alessandro Costacurta, Fabio Cannavaro, Giuseppe Bergomi and Giorgio Chiellini to name a few.
For the France national rugby team, one position always stands out. Despite their abundance of quality back-row forwards over the years and electric outside backs, it is the scrumhalf where their options are always plentiful.
Even today, the brilliant Racing 92 player Maxime Machenaud is behind Baptiste Serin and Antoine Dupont - possibly the best player in the world at the moment - for the spot.
Before them, the iconic Pierre Danos, former national team captain Pierre Lacroix and the electric Pierre Berbizier all held the navy blue number 9 jersey for France.
However, one man truly encompassed the role of Le Petit General during his time with Les Bleus. That man is Dimitri Yachvilli and we at The Flanker felt honour-bound to pay tribute to the mini master.
Early beginnings and life in the West Country
Of Georgian and Armenian descent, Yachvilli was born on born on 19 September 1980 in Brive-la-Gaillarde which sits in the department Corrèze, located in central France.
It is safe to say that rugby is in his blood, with father Michel Yachvili a French international before him. Whereas Dimitri was slight and diminutive, dad Michel was a stocky, combative forward capable of playing both hooker and in the back row.
His paternal grandfather Charles was a Georgian POW who was captured during the Siege of Leningrad. He eventually escaped and travelled to France, participating in the resistance in the province of Limousin with other Georgian expats.
No doubt they are a family proud of their heritage. His brother Gregoire, a professional player himself, even elected to play for the Georgia National Team during his career.
Despite eventually being synonymous with the great Biarritz team of the 2000s, it was Gloucester where the young Yachvili made his early, tentative steps in the game.
In 2001, the France under-21 captain was brought to the English Premiership from his native Brive for a season by then Director of Rugby Philippe Saint-Andre.
Yachvili passed the ball against Northampton Saints during a Premiership match in 2001 at Kingsholm
Credit: Getty Images
It was there he caught people's attention, regularly edging England scrum-half Andy Gomarsall for the number nine jersey.
After one season, in which he was part of the 2002 Premiership-winning Gloucester team, Biarritz came calling and Yachvili returned home in a bid to enhance his international ambitions.
He still has fond memories of his time in the West Country though.
Speaking to the BBC in 2005, he said: "I learnt a lot there, I had a lot of responsibilities and it allowed me to judge my potential.”
With the legendary France captain and scrum-half Fabien Galthie (now head coach of the national team) set to retire after the 2003 Rugby World Cup, Dimitri had his eyes fixed on working his way into the national setup.
Biarritz, France and emergence
What made Yachvili special was the fact he was one of the first scrum-half/fly-half hybrid players that are more common nowadays.
Like his international successors Morgan Parra or Jean-Marc Doussain, he was more than capable of dropping into the first receiver position to dictate play.
He arrived at a Biarittz team who, in 2002, had just won their maiden Top 16 title (there were two extra teams in the French top flight in those days) and were also runners-up to La Rochelle in the Coupe de France final.
With Yachvili at halfback, the 2002–03 Heineken Cup was also a success for Biarritz as they finished top of their pool only to go down narrowly 18–13 to Leinster in Dublin in the quarters.
They were also thumped 32-9 by Stade Francais in the semi-finals of the Top 16, but Yachvili had immediately established himself as a key cog in the Basque side.
In his early years, he was considered a maverick in France - capable of brilliance and catastrophic errors in equal measure.
His time in the international limelight finally came in 2004 after the retirement of Galthie and a Jean-Baptiste Élissalde torn thigh muscle gave him a start against England in the Six Nations.
Yachvili grasped the opportunity in style, single-handedly torturing England in a memorable display in Paris en route to a 24-21 win and a Grand Slam to boot.
He helped himself to 19 points in a man of the match display, including a moment of sheer invention that saw him pull a rabbit out of the hat when nothing looked on.
He repeated the trick the following year in 2005, leading France to their last victory at Twickenham with another virtuoso performance where he scored all his team’s points from the tee in a narrow 18-17 win.
The day before the game, Yachvili could not find his direction when practising his goal kicking and even broke his tee - leading to a panicked phone call to Serge Blanco to source a new one.
The France legend told him that he had friends in London who could help source a replacement - which ended up coming from the Twickenham shop.
Unbeknownst to anyone, the official England store at the home of rugby provided the tee to the scrum-half who kicked the six penalties that flayed Andy Robinson's side.
With a wry smile, Yachvili told the Daily Mail in 2019: “I've never told that story before and even now I am not saying who Serge's friends were in case they are driven out of England.”
Yachvili slots a penalty on the way to an 18-17 win against England in 2005 - using a tee from the Twickenham shop
Credit: PA
Inconsistency, competition and World Cup heartbreak
At club level, Yachvili has effectively guaranteed he will never have to buy himself a beer in Biarritz given his service to the Basque club and they honours they won under his tenure.
They secured back-to-back French titles in 2005 and 2006 - reaching the Heineken Cup Final the same year where they narrowly lost to a strong Munster team, 23-19 at the Millennium Stadium.
Although he had players such as Sireli Bobo, Damien Traille and Nicolas Brusque outside him, it was Yachvili’s game management and ability to manoeuvre his forward pack around the field that made Biarritz a force.
The starting forwards in the 2006 Heineken Cup Final was as follows (8-1): Thomas Lièvremont (C), Imanol Harinordoquy, Serge Betsen, David Couzinet, Jérôme Thion, Census Johnston, Benoît August, Petru Bălan.
Along with Thierry Dusatoir and Olivier Olibeau off the bench, that is a serious unit to be in the driving seat of.
It was the golden era of the great club, with Yachvili the beating heart at the middle of the Basque juggernaut before it fell into decline and ultimately relegation in 2013.
Despite a 2012 Challenge Cup victory vs Toulon, with Yachvili out kicking Jonny Wilkinson in a 21-18 arm wrestle in the final, they have languished in Pro D2 since their great hero retired.
However, on the international stage, it was a different story as the curse of the abundance of brilliant France scrum-halves reared its ugly head.
Yachvili was even omitted by head coach Bernard Laporte for the 2007 Rugby World Cup on home soil, with Jean-Baptiste Elissalde and Pierre Mignoni picked ahead of him.
When Elissalde retired from international duty in 2008, the emergence of Morgan Parra saw Yachvili again dropped for the 2009 Six Nations before featuring sporadically in the 2010 Grand Slam campaign.
It was at the 2011 Rugby World Cup where Yachvili came most agonisingly close to lifting the William Webb Ellis Trophy.
With his heir Parra at fly-half, the master and the student combined to carry a France team at war with itself all the way to the final.
After outclassing England in the quarters and dispatching a Sam Warburton-less Wales in the semis, they faced a jittery New Zealand in Auckland who were gripped by fear as they carried the weight of an expectant nation on their shoulders.
In a grim, attritional affair perhaps remembered best as being the ballad of Stephen Donald, an heroic performance from Thierry Dusuatoir carried them nearly all the way before succumbing to an agonising 9-8 loss.
Although he would feature in the 2012 Six Nations under new coach Philippe Saint-André, the World Cup would be Yachvili’s ultimate swansong in the blue shirt.
It is perhaps both fitting and ironic that Morgan Parra took his place, who is as close a clone to the great Biarritz number 9 you are ever likely to get.
If he was of a different nationality, you can bet your bottom dollar a lot of sides would have built their teams around Yachvili.
However, he suffered simply by being a brilliant Petit General in a rugby nation where they grow on trees.
Here’s to you Dimitri, a man filled with such genius he could even forget he was playing rugby in order to sell a dummy to a defender - as shown with his Cruyff-esque backheel below.
