LONG READ Can late-bloomer Maxime Lucu be France’s number one No.9 in Nations Championship?

Roll the clock back to 21 September 2023. In the 45^th minute of a pool game between France and Namibia, Johan Deysel made a coruscating head-high hit on superstar scrum-half Antoine Dupont. The Toulousain magician left the field holding the side of his face and a rugby nation audibly held its breath. The match was supposed to be a group-stage cakewalk – it finished 96-0 to France – but the profundity of its impact rumbled around the rest of the competition like a distant thunderclap in an echo-chamber.

One day later, the full extent of the damage was revealed: a maxillo-zygomatic fracture, or a broken cheekbone to the likes of you and me. It seemed impossible that Dupont could be ready for a quarter-final against the reigning world champions, and the most aggressively physical team on planet rugby in only three weeks’ time. But ready he was – ‘Touché, mais pas coulé’ as Dupont himself wrote, referencing a popular naval combat game: ‘Hit, but not sunk’.

For a while it looked like he might don a face mask more suited to the melodrama of The Phantom of the Opera than a game of international rugby. It was scaled down to one metal plate in his face, a scrum-cap on top of his head and a mere 21 days of recovery, but he was never the same irresistible force out on the field.

The magic had gone, and the cooler heads in French rugby rightly criticized the dangers of the early return to action, indirectly poking holes in the over-dependence on one man. While head coach Fabien Galthié was claiming that ‘if we put a player on the pitch, it’s because we’ve validated his ability to play’, ex-France back-row Olivier Magne was suggesting more soberly that, ‘there is a level of danger that is significant with an early return, so you have to be vigilant. There’s a problem with the message it sends out to the general public by allowing a player back after such a serious injury.’

In the event, Magne was closer to the mark than Galthié. Dupont played his part in the quarter-final for sure, but the battle was never drawn magnetically into his orb of influence, as so many had been in the past. The master-puppeteer was now just a part of the show; the Olympian hero of French rugby now merely a very talented mortal.

The outcome of that tournament has left French rugby with a deep feeling of unfinished business. As Dupont’s second-in-command, Maxime Lucu observed after the 29-28 loss to the Springboks: ‘It was a massive defeat for us. For us, the French people, it’s really stuck with us. It was our World Cup, and they came and stole it off us. It was such a great game.’

It might have been unthinkable three years ago but it is now the hard reality. Speak it in a whisper: Antoine Dupont is no longer an automatic choice at scrum-half in the French national team.

Like so many traumatic reverses, that 2023 quarter-final may have done French rugby a power of good in the long run. It has awakened Galthié and his corps of support coaches to the need to not only provide meaningful cover for Dupont’s periods of absence, including the Sevens at the 2024 Olympics in Paris, but examine genuine alternatives to le petit général in the starting line-up. Since 2023, the alternatives have collectively started more games than the main man: Dupont has run on in 12 matches, Lucu in nine [plus a lengthy replacement outing when Dupont went off injured in only the 26^th minute of the 2025 Six Nations decider in Dublin]; youthful Rochelais Nolann Le Garrec in six games and Baptiste Serin in two.  Two more Baptistes, Couilloud and Jauneau, plus Thibauld Dabagna, have been used as replacements.

As those stats suggest, the main alternative to Dupont has been Lucu of double European Champions Cup winners Union Bordeaux-Bègles, but in the process, ‘alternative’ has graduated to ‘rival’. That might have been unthinkable three years ago but it is now the hard reality. Speak it in a whisper: Antoine Dupont is no longer an automatic choice at scrum-half in the French national team.

That reality makes the ‘protected list’ of 33 premium Top 14 players on the runway to the 2027 World Cup appear rather ironic, at least as it stands right now.  Protected status means the players involved must be given one club weekend off in every four, or two in every eight over the course of the season by their Top 14 clubs. Likewise, they may not play more than nine Tests per season.

Protected status is designed to provide a layer of insulation against the injury losses which beset France’s last World Cup effort, with giant South African-born lock Paul Willemse and Romain Ntamack, Dupont’s half-back partner at Stade Toulousain, ruled out before the tournament ever started, while prop Cyril Baille and flanker Antony Jelonch both carried injuries into it. All would have been first choices in the strongest France starting XV available at the time.

The current protected list includes 13 rouges-et-noirs, six Bordelais, three apiece from Section Paloise, RC Toulon and Stade Rochelais, two from Racing 92 and one each from Montpellier, Clermont and Olympique Lyonnais. One of the notables excluded from it is Lucu, who was injured at the time the list was drawn up. With all the top men fit and firing, there is no doubt that the Girondins scrum-half should be one of the first assets in French rugby requiring instant protection.

Lucu will be 34 when the 2027 World Cup in Australia starts, but his international career has been an extraordinary story of late-stage development, after winning his first cap for his country at the age of 28. As his attack and skills coach at his club, Irishman Noel McNamara marvelled, ‘Max Lucu is like Benjamin Button. He seems to be getting better all the time. It’s no happy accident, they [Lucu and his half-back partner Matthieu Jalibert] make the effort to connect. They’ve been together for quite a long time. There’s a really nice symbiosis between the two. A lot of it is work, it’s connecting off the pitch, it’s preparation and it’s understanding what they see.’ Lucu may be getting older, but he provides a perfect foil for his playmaking mate at No.10, and his enthusiasm for the game is that of a man 10 years younger.

When he was invited to improve his defensive work-rate in the twilight of his playing career, Lucu obliged where many others might have passed. The modern coaching buzzwords of ‘rapid recovery’ and ‘repeat involvements’ are everything, nowhere more so than on the defensive side of the ball. Leicester Tigers and England scrum-half Jack Van Poortvliet has gone on the record to say that he models his defensive contribution on the work done by Lucu. “The difference he makes for his team in defence is ridiculous,” said Van Poortvliet in wide-eyed admiration.

There remains a strong case to start the club combination from the current European Cup champions in the halves with the indomitable Ramos at 15. Dupont could function as a ‘super-sub’ able to cover both nine and 10 off the bench.

Les Bleus already have a Nations Championship fixture against the mighty Springboks cemented in on 14 November, and if they finish on top of the northern heap at the end of six rounds, they could find themselves playing the same opponents for the second time in two weeks in a final at Twickenham’s Old Cabbage Patch on the 29^th. There is a strong case for club cohesion in the pivotal positions of the backline given the condensed format of the schedule.

Over the first three rounds of the Nations Championship in July, with both Dupont and his club-mate Thomas Ramos withdrawn from the initial stages of the competition, Fabien Galthié opted for a spinal axis of Lucu-Jalibert in the halves with Racing-man Max Spring at full-back. For the next two matches against Australia and Japan he changed it up, with Jalibert moving to the back and Romain Ntamack selected to partner Lucu.

The true pecking order at nine, 10 and 15 in the mind of the France supremo still looks and feels uncertain, but there remains a strong case to start the club combination from the current European Cup champions in the halves with the indomitable Ramos at 15. Dupont could function as a ‘super-sub’ able to cover both nine and 10 off the bench, supercharging those critical last 20 minutes versus the Bokke.

The importance of Lucu to the French cause was underlined by his recent cameo versus high-flying Lyon OU, in which he was showing 22-year old Hugo Reus around the dark closets and corridors of Top 14 rugby. Lucu only spent 46 minutes on the field but his vision of the game dominated proceedings:

https://t.co/RAMDwQsDlQ

— William Bishop (@RPvids1994) October 6, 2026

https://t.co/nzePqsz3KC

— William Bishop (@RPvids1994) October 6, 2026

Even when play is sitting on the UBB 22, Lucu is playing ‘heads-up’ and looking for the big momentum-changer, either via a quick tapped penalty or a massive 50/22 lineout turnover off his left boot.

It was not the only time when Lucu showcased his ability to generate prodigious length and accuracy off either foot in the kicking game:

https://t.co/6koIxZ3Jr2

— William Bishop (@RPvids1994) October 6, 2026

https://t.co/VEKQ1kjHIf

— William Bishop (@RPvids1994) October 6, 2026

Deftness of touch off the boot was hardly a problem either:

https://t.co/bOpa5qxY1U

— William Bishop (@RPvids1994) October 6, 2026

An exquisitely-weighted chip off the left foot again breathes new life into the claret-and-blue attack, and the home side promptly scored a try off the ensuing 5m scrum.

Arguably France lost a home World Cup because they were too dependent on one man for their success. As stratospherically good as he may be, even players of demi-god status like Dupont need not only adequate replacements, but fierce rivals for their position in the starting XV. That rivalry has now materialized in the shape of late-bloomer Lucu, and it would be no great surprise to see rugby’s answer to Benjamin Button turn back the hands of time one more time in the Nations Championship.