Rugby fans witnessed one of the most heart-racing comeback victories in the recent history of the Six Nations when out-of-form England narrowly defeated tournament favorites France 26-25 on Saturday.
While the game was full of surprises from start to finish, fans were also surprised by the lacklustre performance of Antoine Dupont. The French scrum-half committed multiple errors, including failing to catch an easy pass near the try line, in a display far removed from his usual composed performances.
According to former Ireland star Andrew Trimble, this performance from Dupont, and France as a whole, was inexplicable as it was unlike any of their recent displays, including a 43-0 drubbing of Wales in the tournament opener.
He added that the scrum-half having an average game heavily impacted the French team’s performance. However, he joked that Les Bleus will get their revenge against Ireland, as they are unlikely to produce such a dismal performance two matches in a row.
Speaking to Virgin Media, the Irish legend remarked: “When you see Dupont have such a kind of average game, it has an impact, he contributed to a couple of those mistakes.
“We can’t believe, can’t understand, quite what went wrong. It was just so unlike France, to see them do that, they definitely won’t do that two weeks in a row. They probably used all of their errors for 12 months of rugby, and we [Ireland] are going to pay the price in Dublin in two weeks. That’s why Sean Edwards had a laugh. He knows what’s going on.”
Trimble’s compatriot and former Ireland full-back Rob Kearney agreed with him that Dupont’s performance influenced the rest of the French team. He was also surprised that the scrum-half was moved to fly-half towards the end of the match to accommodate reserve No.10 Nolann Le Garrec.
In the same conversation, Kearney stated: “When Dupont is making mistakes, the whole team is going, ‘oh’. He’s their talisman. If he is making mistakes, there must be something wrong.
“Particularly the way the French play rugby, their number 10 is their number nine. [It was] a bit of a strange call, but then Nolann Le Garrec is a class act of a player too, so they probably wanted to get him in the field and try and see if he could create a little bit of magic.”
Former Scotland coach Matt Williams gave credit to England’s defence for rushing onto Dupont to prevent him from having too much time and space, which forced the French star into making mistakes.
Williams added: “I also thought, really credit the English defence. The first two or three defenders on either side of the ruck were just coming straight forward to deny Dupont time and space.
“You could see him a little bit rushed tonight. And then they were coming out on the first forward ball carrier as well. So I thought the defensive strategy did limit Dupont, which the English deserve credit for.”