1
'If you touch the head, it’s a red card': France warn Springboks about Antoine Dupont's face
By PA
France captain Antoine Dupont remains in contention to be involved in Sunday’s World Cup quarter-final against South Africa after being “very active” since returning to training this week.
ADVERTISEMENT
The 2021 world player of the year has been sidelined for the past three weeks since suffering a broken cheekbone after a head-on-head tackle from Namibia captain Johan Deysel in Les Bleus’ third pool match in Marseille on September 21.
Dupont, 26, who underwent surgery on the injury, was cleared on Monday to return to full training with a view to potentially playing in Sunday’s box-office Stade de France showdown with world champions South Africa.
“We’ve been talking for two weeks now, Antoine is doing very well,” said forwards coach William Servat, providing the latest update on the French talisman’s status at a media briefing at Roland Garros on Wednesday afternoon.
“He needed to recuperate. He’s been involved in the team’s strategic choices and the changes we’re making to the game. Today, he was even more involved. He’s back with us and he’s very active in training.”
France head coach Fabien Galthie is due to announce his matchday squad to face the Springboks on Friday morning after discussions with the influential scrum-half over whether or not he feels ready to make himself available for such a high-stakes match.
Bordeaux’s Maxime Lucu deputised in the number nine jersey for Les Bleus’ final Pool A match, a 60-7 victory over Italy on Friday.
ADVERTISEMENT
Servat dismissed any notion that France might have to alter their defensive plans to compensate for any concerns about Dupont’s jaw if he is selected to face the ferociously physical Springboks this weekend.
“Antoine is one of the best defenders in the team and he’s at 100 per cent,” said Servat. “There’s no reason to change anything.”
Dupont has been trying out various forms of facial protection since his injury, but back-rower Gregory Alldritt has no concerns about his captain being exposed to further damage if he declares himself fit to tackle the bruising Boks.
“We know that in rugby, if you touch the head, it’s a red card,” said Alldritt. “He [Dupont] saw his surgeon who gave him the green light.
ADVERTISEMENT
“Antoine is an intelligent, sensible person. If he says he can play again, it’s because he’s fully fit.”
Alldritt admits the French will have to play at their maximum intensity if they are to overcome a Boks side who ran them close in a nail-biting showdown in Marseille last November that ended 30-26 to Les Bleus.
“We’ve worked hard on this for four years,” he said of their bid to win the World Cup on home soil. “We’ve played some big games, both with our clubs and with the French national team.
“The opening match [against New Zealand] was complicated, but we were ahead by half-time. I hope it’ll be the same this weekend.
“We’re coming down the home straight. We want to enjoy ourselves, have a lot of fun and finish this competition with no regrets.
“We’re making progress match-by-match but so are they. We know how they’re going to play.
“Their DNA, their rugby, is based on physicality. It’s up to us to put in more intensity than usual for 80 minutes. As we saw in Marseille, they’re a team that stays in the game for 80 minutes. We’ve been warned.”
Here is an idea. Let him rest and he does not need to worry about breaking his face even more. No one is going to tip toe around du Pont. If he gets a knock, well sorry. Perhaps he should have recovered first. Springboks will not treat him with kid gloves at all, he will get hit just as hard as anyone else playing for their country in a world cup.
Fiotte
Raclure de bidet
But you though. You are stupid for sure.
Why don’t the Frenchies don’t speak English ?
Is there a reason for it ?
I have heard it from family members of mine , that they do not speak English???
I don't like him and I don't hate him. I simply see his game clearly (believe me, I have the qualifications to say that). Anyway, if you don't go to the semi-final, Ireland or France will prevent AB from winning this cup.
I hope the match will be good and if you lose, don't worry, we know that SA has a very good team.
Mate I'm under no illusion that we are going into a tough game that could go either way on neutral ground let alone home advantage. As for Erasmus, you will struggle to find a single South African that doesn't hold him to high esteem. He took us from some of our darkest times to winning a world cup almost over night and is possibly leading us to our second. Like him or hate him he is one of the best coaches in the world.
Boks gonna run trains on that poor little guy.
That “poor little guy” eats 9 PaPaRumple for breakfast . 😂
World Rugby should never have allowed du Pont to play for his safety sake. If France and du Pont plays then he is a fair target for physical tackles but not head shots. Hopefully Ben O’Keefe (or BOK) will blow correctly and objectively.
How are the officials going to determine this? Oh I see o mattr what even if it is a legit hard-core tackle you,re gone - red card. WR has lot to answer for in this particular case allowing a injured player, so much for player safety? Despite all this it only means one thing -France must win
There is a humerous clip circulating of the Nick White/Faf de Klerk carding incident, from a Wallabies v SA game last year August. In the video Dupont gets intentionally mis-translated for the sake of a few laughs. If you know, you know.
I see Mr mouth on a stick Erasmus has been putting in his 2 penneth
Jeez Tim. I don’t know where you went to school but you should ask for your money back.
Sounds like a setup.
Du pont can just run into Everyone head first and extract a card… Joking. Not Joking.
The fact that France are willing to risk the safety and long term health of du Pont is both short-sighted and reckless. If he plays.
But it mostly says a lot about how desperately they need him.
Regardless if your team needs you or not, imagine for a second that you are Dupont: would you like to play a World Cup quarterfinal?
So they want to play a guy that’s not supposed to be playing and whom is clearly not fit , what next uncontested scrums
He is playing that’s fine he is going ri live in absolute Terror for as long as he is on the pitch
If he plays he will be fit
Let’s get real. You Europeans always think you will smash the boks or all blacks but you won’t. SA will win. All blacks will smash Ireland same old story
Getting real as you say will see a possible (I hope) NZ victory over Ireland, but France will win their 1/4 and will win the WC, currently they have the best coach, best defensive coach, best team manager and in most positions the best players.
Let’s be real. Du Pont isn’t playing this weekend. Nobody is fooled.
Penetrating !
5 minute cameo off the bench.
This site has become so poor. I’ll be moving on. Its been great but journalism does not exist here anymore.
While I agree that the journalism on this site often reads like a high school writing assignment and they seem to struggle to find quality journalists capable of focusing on rugby rather than pushing their own agendas and fanboy opinions (more often than not, anti-SA, pro-NZ, and don’t get me started on the way the site reports on England as though they are a rugby team worth reporting on), I don’t see why this article riled you so much. These are just typical pre-match statements by players and I think it’s a bit far-fetched to suggest that World Rugby are putting words in the mouth of Greg Aldritt. This article is poached directly and poorly Google Translated from Le Parisien newspaper.
I do wish players would just stay out of the press before games, as a Scotland supporter, even prior to kick-off against Ireland I was embarrassed by the pointless rhetoric of how they had it all worked out and knew Ireland’s weaknesses. It’s like listening to a boxer or an MMA fighter mouthing off before a bout and serves zero purpose other than to create an unrealistic hype around what should otherwise be a game of rugby to be enjoyed, not a slanging match designed to insult the opposition and influence the referee. I’m pretty sure referees don’t sit around reading this nonsense anyway so its effect is meaningless and only serves to wind people up and create the kind of tension and animosity that I’ve read on this site since 2019 now. Rugby used to be a game of respect where you could enjoy standing in the stands next to opposition supporters and enjoy each others’ company for a couple of hours but the dawn of football style commentary around the game has turned sites like this into an ugly forum you wouldn’t really want your kids to participate in.
Where to?
It’s a mouthpiece for world rugby and the IRB!!.
Greg is a high performance eight that showed Savea up badly as out of position. However he's suffered the misfortune of being named possibly the most uncool first name in France when you can come up with cool words like Serge and Fabien.
Although he's tried to model his game on the character Vaako in the movie Riddick Greg needs to study the laws of rugby as there are plenty of legal contacts made with the head that can and are ruled perfectly legal, in fact contact with the head is a key part of attacking play to disrupt the tackler with the fend
If that results in the injury to Dupont being injured again there is nothing France can complain about as it's their risk
The Alldritt family has Scottish roots. Gregory’s father, Terence, moved to Stirling aged 12 after being born in Kenya and attending boarding school in South Africa. Greg’s brother, Scott, played for Stu Mel in Edinburgh for a number of years. It would have been pretty bizarre for an anglophone ex-pat who settled in Scotland to name his son Fabien or Serge, don’t you think?
Regarding the reference to “touching the head” Aldritt is clearly referring to the recent reinforcement of sanctions for head on head contact, rather than suggesting that at no point during a game of rugby can any contact with the head be made. I think you can put this down to ‘lost in translation’. Of course a hand-off will make contact with the head or face of the defender, but a hand-off must be a locked, straight arm which, while effective in putting an incoming tackler off balance, is a relatively harmless obstacle as opposed to the potentially career ending type of head on head contact that Deysel, albeit mistakenly, dished out on Dupont a couple of weeks ago.
I really hope he’s reading this forum. He has so much to learn from you ! 🤣
RugbyPass love good clickbait style article headings. Whilst I enjoy the banter in the CS, there are other rugby sites with a better quality of article imo.
Misleading title it should read Aldrit said that blah blah blah nice try though
The irony is that in the original article this was poached from, William Servat, the French scrum coach, did actually say something (albeit tongue in cheek with a smile on his face) worthy of an accurate headline which would have got just as many clicks, without the inherent dishonesty that pervades almost all Rugbypass headlines these days.
This kind of sensationalist journalism is akin to a pathalogical liar who overlooks an opportunity to tell a better story, because it is true and the pathalogical liar is averse to the truth. You had the perfect headline right under your nose but the habitual approach of twisting the truth to get clicks had you miss it completely.
Servat said “La rencontre sera d’une intensité rare. J’espère qu’ils ont prévu un bon staff médical sur le côté (sourire).”
“The match will be played with a rare degree of intensity. I hope they’ve got a decent team of medics (smiles).”
Clickbait. That’s what it’s all about. Screw journalism. Screw the readers. Just get them clicks.