LONG READ How Antoine Dupont lit up the rugby world to vie for GOAT status

The tubae and buccinae are sounding, brazen shields are being beaten and the battlelines are beginning to harden, after Antoine Dupont’s Olympic gold medal in the Men’s Sevens. On the one hand, an army of rugby supporters who firmly believe that the French wizard has now ascended to the status of G.O.A.T [greatest-of-all-time]; on the other, a host who will never accept a man from north of the equator as the best in the world in his own time, let alone the best of all time.

Is Dupont a better scrum-half than Fourie Du Preez, or Aaron Smith, or Joost Van Der Westhuizen from previous eras, or even Leinster and Ireland’s Jamison Gibson-Park in the current generation? In the middle of such a ferociously parochial debate, you need a judge who treads the fine margins of bias without ever losing balance, the one who inhabits the invaluable in-between.

That man is ex-Crusader, and six-time Super Rugby champion scrum-half turned Aotearoa rugby podcast pundit Bryn Hall. Hall knows what he is talking about and he comes from the south, and these were his comments after watching the 2024 Champions Cup Final between Dupont’s club Stade Toulousain and Leinster:

“There are just so many highlights that you could point out. [Leinster hooker Dan] Sheehan made that big line-break, [Dupont] had the ball stripped from him but he comes all the way back, Sheehan almost scores the try and Dupont gets the steal just five metres from the line.

“There are so many things that Dupont can do very, very well. Defensively, on attack, kicking; he is your full threat.

“If he gets a World Cup win in the next cycle – hopefully not for the Kiwis, but for the French – you would have to put him down as possibly being the best player that’s ever played [the game].

“He has to be in that argument with the way he is able to play at international level and obviously with Toulouse – and we haven’t even touched on Sevens. He is probably going to go and win a gold medal at the Olympics. That’s another great thing about Dupont, is that he hasn’t even been in there full-time this year with Toulouse, he’s been playing Sevens!”

I am going to have to make sacrifices to spend time with this team and get used to this special game and discipline. I am hoping to be at my peak and challenge at the Olympics

Antoine Dupont

There are caveats – Dupont needs to win a be part of a World-Cup winning outfit, or at least, part of a successful, series-winning tour of New Zealand or South Africa with France. At the same time, his ability to operate in so many different areas of the game so effectively – with ball in hand, on defence, and in the kicking game marks him out as probably the best pure rugby-player of the lot. He can be the greatest player without being necessarily the best No 9.

If that is the reason why he can be part of a Sevens program for only six months and contribute to it so mightily and immediately, it is also a cast-iron qualification for the title of G.O.AT. Others like New Zealanders Dan Carter, Ben Smith and Kieran Read, and Springbok Danie Gerber would probably fall into the same category.

The other qualification is that a player begins to transcend his own speciality sport and reach out to a new audience, a new cross-section of the public:

“I now hope to perform well. For any sports fan, the Olympics remain mythical. The fact we are hosting the Games in France means it’s going to be an incredible party to [hopefully] be a part of.

“I am going to have to make sacrifices to spend time with this team and get used to this special game and discipline. I am hoping to be at my peak and challenge at the Olympics.”

After Les Bleus’ gold medal-winning performance against Fiji, Dupont was already being painted as the new French President on social media. Despite starting a few days before the official opening ceremony to avoid the eternal space-jostle with Swimming and Athletics, Sevens was suddenly no longer an Olympic side-show, it was now a centrepiece. 69,000 fans packed into the Stade de France, heaving, swaying and chanting, “Qui ne saute pas n’est pas Français. ‘He who does not jump is not French’.” It was a direct reference to Antoine Dupont’s jump into another time-warp, and a new dimension as sporting hero.

For any serious student of the game, the main point of interest orbited around the adaptation of le petit general’s skills to a new format. As ex-Harlequins’ #10 Will Edwards explained,

Antoine Dupont typically had only five minutes in the second half of games to show his wares, and transform the outcomes for his team.

“The general rugby skill-set [between Sevens and Fifteens] is very similar. [But] each small detail is highlighted ‘to the Nth degree’ because it is seven players on a 15-a-side pitch.

“Missing one tackle in a fifteens game, you are normally backed up by a mate; if you miss a tackle on a sevens pitch, they are probably going to go and score. It puts your one-on-one ability in all facets of the game under the spotlight.

“[Dupont] will be fit enough, but it is a very different type of fitness. Sevens is at 90 per cent of your max speed for 14 minutes straight in the heat, and there are not as many breaks in play. How your body deals with it is different.”

All the one-on-one skills – tackling, jackaling, running, passing and supporting are performed at high-speed and the aerobic demands are sustained. Antoine Dupont typically had only five minutes in the second half of games to show his wares, and transform the outcomes for his team.

In the last two matches against the Blitzbokke and the flying Fijians, the score blew out from 0-0 to 19-5 in the semi-final, and from 7-7 to 26-7 in the final after Dupont’s arrival on the field. While the little magician was in situ, the total score was 38-5 in favour of France. In only 12 minutes of playing-time, he scored two tries, had two try-assists while contributing three other break-makers and making one defensive turnover.

The variety of the roles France found for their diminutive genius in that short span was bewildering. Defensively, France used Dupont in the same way that a #7 is employed in fifteens, as the first man in over the tackle ball:

At two consecutive tackles on both 15m lines, first left then right, Dupont is the first man on-ball, and the would-be pilferer after a tackle has been completed. In general play, he often dropped back to the defensive sweeper role, as a Sevens’ version of the #15 in the backfield.

On attack he tended to stand at second receiver with the full width available, running an arc towards the outside half of the field, demanding that tacklers plant their feet to defend him and creating space for others to exploit:

In midfield, he shifted up one spot to first receiver on the same mission:

Translate that ability to the 5m line, and Dupont became a very lethal weapon indeed from tapped penalty situations:

The final finished with Antoine Dupont playing hooker, first throwing into the lineout, and then marshalling the maul thereafter. With the benefit of an extra 10 to 15 kilos or so on his chunky frame, he could quite comfortably fill the same role in rugby fifteens:

If there is the embryonic mindset of a forward, a #2 or a #7 lurking somewhere in the man, it has not either cancelled or supplanted the essential romance of the French rugby spirit. Oh no, far from it:

This was Dupont’s first action of the final after coming on for the second period. It was also his most brilliant thrust, straight from the opening kick-off. He was leaving history in his wake. The man he is escaping down the left side-line is none other than Jerry Tuwai, one of the most outstanding Sevens schemers of his era and a worthy successor to the likes of Waisale Serevi.

As his coach Osea Kolinisau explained, “Jerry leaves footprints in the sand for other boys to follow. After he is gone, I think we are going to see there was only one Jerry Tuwai.” If that is true statement of his stature in the game, how to assess the performance of the man who beat him, after only six months spent in a setting he barely understood?

The case for Antoine Dupont as G.O.A.T is still burgeoning, but unproven. A gold medal at his home Olympics in Paris will only add to the lustrous myth surrounding the man. From the dark cavern of a Phantom of the Opera face-mask and World Cup heartache out into the light of gilded triumph in the space of ten short months. It has been some journey.

For now, Antoine Dupont’s claim will rest on the translate-ability of his talent from Fifteens to Sevens, and the versatility to combine the features of a #2, a #7, a #9, a #10, a #12 and #15 all in the same frame held together by one backbone. That, and his growing reach beyond rugby, touching a new audience and transcending his sport.

Antoine Dupont has joined the modern rugby gods on Olympus -the greatest athlete to play rugby [Jonah Lomu at his peak], and the all-rounders who understood all aspects of the game so deeply – Dan Carter, Kieran Read, Ben Smith and Danie Gerber. For now, he will have to be content to be one-among-many, to sit on a mountain-top with fellow titans – but no Zeus.