In Reuil-Malmaison,
The important thing in life is self-deprecation. There is no shortage of followers of the French XV, fortunately, who are the first to laugh at the “Toto hunt” which takes place during each Blues training session. There was no shortage of it again on Tuesday, during the first 15 minutes of the session which we had the right to observe on the main pitch of the Parc stadium, in Rueil-Malmaison. Authorized by his surgeon to resume collective training on Monday, Antoine Dupont was obviously the only object of attention of the media present.
Important test this Wednesday
“He’s under the tent!” » « he takes a blue chasuble [celui des titulaires] “, “he’s smiling, that’s good”, these are the observations of the day, which confirm the positive trend of seeing him back for the quarter-final next Sunday. After a fairly light session on Monday afternoon, during which he rehearsed the game throws with his teammates, the scrum-half got a little more into the thick of things with moderate-intensity training. It started a little stronger than expected, moreover, with an involuntary stamp from Matthieu Jalibert during the warm-up, but without any injury to deplore. We then saw it in an exercise with opposition, but only in the offensive phase, and therefore with reduced contact.
If the signals are rather positive, the first two sessions of the week are however not enough to confirm that the captain of the Blues will be fit. “What interested us for the moment was to reconnect him to the team, for his partners to get used to him again, with his way of playing which is different from that of Maxime [Lucu], explained attack coach Laurent Labit in the evening. High intensity will be on tomorrow [mercredi]. »
This will be an important test for Dupont, because the staff will have to know at the end of this session whether they can count on him or not. There will be no training on Thursday, before the lineup is announced the next day. Until then, a debrief will be carried out on his personal feelings and the prospect of playing a match as fierce as a World Cup quarter-final against South Africa. This will be the key to his participation, if we decipher Labit’s words. “On the contacts, the surgeon gave the green light, so he considers that everything is in place. We don’t need to box him to know if he can play on Sunday. » Implied, the physical aspect is not seen as a problem. It will simply be the player and his possible apprehension to return there.
An element could help in decision-making. Since the start of the week, Dupont has been testing a protective helmet. The goal is to see if he feels comfortable with it, if it does not interfere with his vision of the game and his ability to make himself heard by his partners with all the noise that one can imagine coming down from the stands. Laurent Labit did not want to expand on the subject. “For the moment, these are tests,” he said. We’ll see at the end of the week. »
If France holds its breath, the Dupont soap opera does not seem to excite South Africa. It took a French journalist to get involved for the subject to be raised at a press conference on Tuesday. Enough to get a good sentence from Ressie Erasmus. “He will come back in better shape since his problem may have forced him to eat less,” joked the director of rugby for the reigning world champions. With a casualness that we certainly don’t have to take literally. The South Africans know well that it will not be the same match with or without him in front.