Next weekend will provide some vital respite for French rugby. An underwhelming autumn series will be over and the Top 14 may feature the long-awaited return of Antoine Dupont, when Toulouse host Racing 92 on Saturday-night primetime. How they need him to restore their smile.
First, this Saturday. There is little France can do against Australia at Stade de France to transform this into a successful November. It has been a month of enforced absence, crowd tedium, slow ball, offensive apathy, selectorial fickleness, defeat by 14 Springboks in Paris and scraping past Fiji in Bordeaux. Fabien Galthié, the head coach, spoke longingly of how much time Fiji had spent together on cohesion compared with his team (surely the first time that sentiment has been uttered).
It hardly needs stating that every team suffers without Dupont. France have won 24 of the past 27 Tests in which he has been at scrum half. The defeats were by Ireland in the 2023 Six Nations, South Africa in the World Cup quarter-final eight months later, and England at Twickenham this year. The trouble is that France have been without him for 13 of 20 Tests since their World Cup on home soil.
His Olympic ambition kept him out of the 2024 Six Nations, in which France drew at home to Italy, and a summer tour to Argentina (that he would have missed anyway), and the knee injury suffered from Tadhg Beirne’s clearout in Dublin eight months ago has kept him off the field ever since.
Dupont recently signed a contract extension with Toulouse, which will keep him at the club until 2031
MATTHIEU RONDEL/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES
As we have seen recently, even the sacrosanct is up for censure. The early weeks of the season featured comments by Ugo Mola, the Toulouse head coach, in opposition to “Dupont-bashing” — criticism of France’s totem for his extracurricular activities during rehabilitation. They dared to come for Batman, and now they are boff, sploosh and kapowing for Robin. Holy Romain Ntamack indeed.
The October edition of Raffut, a rugby journal in association with the Sud Ouest newspaper, took as its theme “a French obsession” — namely, the half-back hinge of No9 and No10. Jean-Pierre Dorian used his editor’s slot to list the possible half-back combinations, citing the ideal as Dupont at No9 and Dupont at No10 (impossible, even by his standards). For chaotic artistry, one must consider the pair of Baptiste Serin — a leader, not a lieutenant, still out of the international reckoning — with Matthieu Jalibert, as occurred against Italy on November 28, 2020, in a pandemic fever dream.
Dupontamack is France’s most-used half-back partnership ever, with 29 starts. That George Gregan and Stephen Larkham lined up together on just shy of 80 occasions for Australia shows what is possible in a consistent environment, compared with France’s historic passion for chop and change. In a subsequent Raffut essay called “The perpetual quest for the ideal couple”, Arnaud David wrote: “The complementary nature of the pair was so obvious, both in their technical skills and their temperaments. The steely nerves and cool demeanour of [Ntamack] contrasted sharply with the flashes of brilliance of Dupont, the dazzling Zebulon.”
Dupont has come in for criticism for his off-field activities during his recovery
CATHERINE STEENKESTE/GETTY IMAGES
The vicissitudes of sport are such that Dupontamack has been France’s hinge only three times in the past three seasons: a World Cup warm-up against Scotland in August 2023, and the wins over Wales and Ireland in this year’s Six Nations. While Dupont recovered from a facial fracture to oppose South Africa in the 2023 World Cup quarter-final defeat, the nightmare from which France will never wake up, Ntamack missed the tournament because of a knee injury in the Scotland game. Perhaps there is a parallel universe in which the two men lifted the Webb Ellis Cup at Stade de France on October 28, 2023.
If there is one person who could benefit from this uncertainty, it is Jalibert, linking up with Maxime Lucu, his Bordeaux Bègles team-mate, but injury has kept the fly half out of the autumn picture. The Dupont-Jalibert combination is complicated, because when they are together lightning is trying to strike twice right next to each other. Ntamack’s more considered approach, content to sit in the sidecar but still with his own full set of gears, is the method of choice, though his counterattack from his own dead-ball area against the All Blacks in 2021, and his solo try against La Rochelle in the 2023 Top 14 final, showed he is no carthorse.
The French game revolves around scrum halves, who often start as fly halves but move infield to get their hands on the ball more often, yet even this ecosystem is not immune to paroxysms of opinion on fly halves. The morning after France beat England 53-10 at Twickenham in 2023, Ntamack acknowledged his familiarity with the rhythm of stand-off critique from his childhood: minimal praise for collective success, extensive blame for collective shortcomings.
Galthié and his side have struggled this autumn, beating only Fiji and losing to a 14-man South Africa
ANNE-CHRISTINE POUJOULAT/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES
So it is in November 2025: France under the pump, Ntamack under the pump. “The French team isn’t dominant; they have very few attacking sequences and very little pace,” Jean-Baptiste Élissalde, the former France half back, told L’Équipe. “He’s caught in the middle of all that. And like all fly halves in the world, especially in the French system where the game revolves around the scrum half, he’s more hampered. Romain isn’t a soloist, even if he’s capable of being one. He’s primarily someone who makes his team play cleanly.”
Barring more calamity, Dupontamack will ease their way back with Toulouse first before the Six Nations. Seeking a fourth successive Top 14 title, the aristocrats are top of the table but are one of five teams with a record of six wins and three losses. In a competitive start to the season, they are only four points ahead of La Rochelle in seventh.
A full-bore France XV can easily be more than 50 per cent Toulousain. On Saturday night six members of the starting line-up are Rouge et Noir, with the 20-year-old centre Kalvin Gourgues set for a debut off the bench. The last of the eight Toulousains in the 23 is Rodrigue Neti, the replacement loose-head prop. The front row is an area where France could do with Cyril Baille and Uini Atonio — add in Peato Mauvaka at hooker and that is an adequate alternate front row unavailable. The depth of France’s propping stocks is being tested, not wholly successfully.
Part and parcel of international rugby as it is, France are missing a lot of players besides Dupont — potentially ten members of a first-choice 23. François Cros has just had knee surgery, and Mickaël Guillard is out for some weeks after his latest audition at No8 ahead of Grégory Alldritt. In the backs, Nolann Le Garrec, Yoram Moefana and Théo Attissogbe are unavailable. Pierre-Louis Barassi and his replacement Émilien Gailleton both went off inside half an hour against Fiji, bringing on the flanker Paul Boudehent (also injured after 22 minutes of play) and requiring Oscar Jégou to be at centre for 50 minutes.
Such are the pitfalls of a 6-2 bench split, for which Galthié has again opted this weekend. Neither the starting tight five nor the substitutes have offered fizz or impact this month. Alldritt, omitted from the 23 for the opening match of the campaign, captains the side again and is joined in the back row by Charles Ollivon, who did not feature against South Africa, was in the second row against Fiji, and now wears No7. The quality in France’s 23, with so many absences, demonstrates why their results are so infuriating.
Thibaud Flament vowed that the team’s aim this week was to enjoy themselves and to entertain the public against Australia. There are still plenty of them watching, with an average audience of 6.2 million on TF1 for the defeat by South Africa, larger than the audience for the national football team’s victory over Ukraine five days later.
The Wallabies looked lethargic on arrival in Europe and have flagged to defeats by England, Italy and Ireland. Even a 50-point pasting to nil would carry the burden of caveat for France. There is some World Cup jeopardy: were Australia to win by 16 points or more, they would leapfrog France in the rankings and send Les Bleus into the second band for the pool-stage draw on December 3. An unthinkable result, even in this climate.
France teamThomas Ramos; Damian Penaud, Nicolas Depoortère, Gaël Fickou, Louis Bielle-Biarrey; Romain Ntamack, Maxime Lucu; Jean-Baptiste Gros, Julien Marchand, Régis Montagne, Thibaud Flament, Emmanuel Meafou, Anthony Jelonch, Charles Ollivon, Grégory Alldritt. Replacements Maxime Lamothe, Rodrigue Neti, Thomas Laclayat, Romain Taofifenua, Hugo Auradou, Oscar Jegou, Baptiste Jauneau, Kalvin Gourgues. Australia teamMax Jorgensen; Harry Potter, Joseph-Aukuso Suaalii, Len Ikitau, Dylan Pietsch; Tane Edmed, Jake Gordon; Angus Bell, Matt Faessler, Taniela Tupou, Jeremy Williams, Nick Frost, Tom Hooper, Fraser McReight, Harry Wilson. Replacements Josh Nasser, Aidan Ross, Allan Alaalatoa, Rob Valetini, Carlo Tizzano, Kalani Thomas, Hamish Stewart, Filipo Daugunu.France v Australia
Saturday, 8.10pm
Stade de France
TV TNT Sports 1