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How France star Antoine Dupont was very nearly lost to football

By Online Editors
(Photo by Frederic Stevens/Getty Images)

France scrum-half Antoine Dupont is expected to light up the Stade de France on Saturday night, the 23-year-old emerging in recent years to quickly become a global star of the sport who is now widely recognised as one of the best No9s – if not the best – in the world just now.

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Having torn Wales apart in last weekend’s warm-up, the half-back will earn his 25th cap against Ireland three-and-a-half years after he made his debut in Italy in March 2017.

The Toulouse player has swiftly risen from rookie to leadership status in the France ranks but Midi Olympique have reported how playmaker Dupont was very nearly lost to football at a young age as he had grown bored with the level of grassroots rugby he was playing it. 

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The latest edition of the French rugby bi-weekly newspaper spoke with Dupont’s first coach Jean-Philippe Guerrero, who set-up a rugby school in Castelnau-Magnoac with like-minded parents, including Dupont’s father. 

However, the would-be star eventually grew tired with rugby and would have taken up football but for his club coaches making a crucial decision which accelerated his development and kept him on track for stardom later down the line. 

Guerrero explained: “One day his mother said to me: ‘I don’t know if Antoine will continue rugby.’ He was playing U8s but was bored with players his age, so he wanted to stop this sport and try football where a few friends of his were playing. 

“The president of the rugby school at the time and the educators who saw Antoine Dupont evolve before their eyes decided to move him up a category despite being just seven-and-a-half years old.

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“He was more at his level against kids who were two years older than him. And even there again, the difference in talent and maturity was enormous on the pitch. When he decided to take the ball and go to score, no one could stop him.”

In an effort to place a limit to Dupont’s game-destroying dominance, Guerrero and his colleagues introduced rules in training that they were not used to. “We forced a number of compulsory passes during certain workshops. If we didn’t do that, Antoine crossed the field all alone with each of his ball carries.”

 

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Sam T 2 hours ago
Jake White: Let me clear up some things

I remember towards the end of the original broadcasting deal for Super rugby with Newscorp that there was talk about the competition expanding to improve negotiations for more money - more content, more cash. Professional rugby was still in its infancy then and I held an opposing view that if Super rugby was a truly valuable competition then it should attract more broadcasters to bid for the rights, thereby increasing the value without needing to add more teams and games. Unfortunately since the game turned professional, the tension between club, talent and country has only grown further. I would argue we’re already at a point in time where the present is the future. The only international competitions that matter are 6N, RC and RWC. The inter-hemisphere tours are only developmental for those competitions. The games that increasingly matter more to fans, sponsors and broadcasters are between the clubs. Particularly for European fans, there are multiple competitions to follow your teams fortunes every week. SA is not Europe but competes in a single continental competition, so the travel component will always be an impediment. It was worse in the bloated days of Super rugby when teams traversed between four continents - Africa, America, Asia and Australia. The percentage of players who represent their country is less than 5% of the professional player base, so the sense of sacrifice isn’t as strong a motivation for the rest who are more focused on playing professional rugby and earning as much from their body as they can. Rugby like cricket created the conundrum it’s constantly fighting a losing battle with.

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Ed the Duck 9 hours ago
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