LONG READ Is Antoine Dupont the best in the world or simply out of this world?

Padded up to face a frisky few overs from the media earlier this week, England’s Tommy Freeman was playing a cagey innings; nudging a few sharp singles, straight-batting the spinners and steering well clear of the bouncers. It was a perfectly decent knock until he was dobbed a dolly about England’s weekend date with Antoine Dupont. ‘You can’t underestimate how good a player he is,’ he said, ‘but at the end of the day, he’s human.’ Here, if you needed it, was cast-iron proof that it’s occasionally the full tosses down the leg-side that catch you out.

Why? Because there is absolutely no evidence anywhere to suggest that Antoine Dupont is ‘human’. Humans make mistakes; humans melt when the wick’s turned up; humans don’t have eyes in the back of their head, wings on their feet, steel girder forearm fends, SatNav support lines and what appears to be built-in Artificial Intelligence. The old rules – looks like a duck, walks like a duck, quacks like a duck; mate, that’s a duck – simply do not apply.

Indeed, it’s not too wild an exaggeration to suggest that Dupont is redefining rugby. Against Wales on the opening weekend, he effectively played both nine and ten; inch-perfect cross-kicks, killer cut-out passes, outside breaks, each of which led directly to scores. Time was you needed a Sexton or a Mo’unga on your team-sheet to make all that happen. No longer.

But for all his athleticism, skillset, dynamism and sheer strength – as someone once said of someone else, give him a hammer and a hot anvil and he could straighten out a rainbow – it’s his rugby intelligence that marks him out. Dupont first laced up a pair of boots back in Magnoac when he was just four, so if you’re a disciple of Malcolm Gladwell’s 10,000 hours theory, it’s not hard to work out how those rugby smarts have developed. Like Tiger Woods, he’s lived and breathed his sport his entire life.

But there’s even more to it than that. Great chess players, so it’s supposed, become great only because they have the ability to assess all the options, the problem with this thesis being that most of those options will be crap and, consequently, overload the brain. In fact, the mark of a grandmaster isn’t how many moves they consider but how few and this is Dupont’s genius; that instant grasp of his relevant – run, kick, pass – reference points. He is totally uncluttered.

His Sevens stint was further evidence of his innate shrewdness and willingness to push his boundaries.

Likewise, off the field. Prior to the tournament, Fabien Galthié was poked by the press about France’s lack of recent success in the Six Nations. I’m paraphrasing but the gist of his pointed response was that in six years, France have won an unprecedented 80% of their matches which, he protested, wasn’t too shabby. Pressed on the same question, Dupont’s answer – paraphrasing again – was that an 80% win ratio when you aren’t lifting any pots isn’t much to shout about. He doesn’t do excuses in private or in public.

His Sevens stint was further evidence of his innate shrewdness and willingness to push his boundaries. The poster boy of France’s home World Cup in 2023, he ended it bereft amid the shards and splinters of the quarter finals. His solution? An international ‘gap year’ on the Sevens circuit sharpening new skills and perspectives on an Olympic Odyssey. And we all know how that ended.

And in his Six Nations absence? France were atomised in Marseille by Ireland, gifted a highly dubious win in Scotland, all but lost to Italy in Lille, prevailed against the wooden spoonists in Cardiff and needed an 80th minute three-pointer from Thomas Ramos in Lyon to hold off the English. Sometimes, two and two really do make four.

How to stop him? Back to Tommy Freeman. ‘It’s all about picking things up early,’ he said, ‘putting him under pressure and, like any other player when you put pressure on them, they start to leak a few opportunities.’ Yes, well, last season, perhaps we could’ve had a chat about that. This season, though, with the new laws offering scrum-halves ‘protected status’ at rucks, scrums and mauls, Dupont has become untouchable in more ways than one.

Each French score against the hapless Wales was built on power rather than panache and, Dupont aside, it’s this that’ll be giving English supporters the heebie-jeebies this weekend.

Look, there’s more to France than just their ‘neuf’. He has some serious horsepower under the hood in front of him – the likes of Alldritt; the unsung Cros and Gros – together with a string of thoroughbreds queueing up behind – take your pick on that one. Factor in Ramos and his plumb-line goal-kicking – have you noticed how many of his shots sail straight through the heart of the posts – and it doesn’t take a genius to see why so many, outside Ireland at least, make France the tournament favourites. Their clubs’ effervescent Champions’ Cup form has, understandably, seduced everyone.

And yet aside from the conjuring tricks that led to the try dotted down by – I gather, the Croydon-born – Émilien Gailleton, each French score against the hapless Wales was built on power rather than panache and, Dupont aside, it’s this that’ll be giving English supporters the heebie-jeebies this weekend, not least those with memories of two years ago when France obliterated England on both sides of the gain line. There was simply no white ‘dent’ with or without the ball; indeed, by the end of the game, all that was holding England together was cold spit and bailer twine.

Last week’s trip to Dublin offers little optimism. The collective defensive lapses of the autumn appear to have been replaced by individual ones and the ‘finishers’ – as Eddie Jones used to call them – alas, still don’t finish. And as Jones has pointed out elsewhere this week, England under pressure seem incapable of maintaining what he described as ‘emotional consistency’ which, at root, you suspect, comes from a lack of trust in the collective process. Compare and contrast with Ireland.

Anything else? Well, Steve Borthwick’s selections and substitutions look too reactive; cheap penalties are killing them and Plan ‘B’ is such a closely-guarded secret that not even the players seem to know what it is. Add up all of that and it’s not difficult to see why the back end of games is repeatedly undoing the English.

Can England outmanoeuvre the French, run them off their feet? Possibly. But can they do it for 80 minutes? Now, there’s the rub.

And yet we were saying all this and more last year when England capitulated in Edinburgh and then hosted the, supposedly, indomitable Irish in London; free hit, freewheel. Can they outmanoeuvre the French, run them off their feet? Possibly. But can they do it for 80 minutes? Now, there’s the rub.

But if they can’t, they can kiss their Six Nations’ aspirations  goodbye and, unusual as it is to see the whittling knives being sharpened in just the second round of the tournament, that applies across the board this weekend. If Scotland are to stay in the conversation, they need to gag the Irish and while Ireland, potentially, could survive a pratfall in Edinburgh, they’d be on low road to the title rather than the high. Add in Rome, where Italy and Wales are grappling to avoid, in all likelihood, the ignominy of irrelevance and it’s a hinge weekend.

But as much as it seems utterly bonkers to say so, you sense one man holds the key to this tournament. It’s not just that Dupont does everything but that he does it week in, week out for club and country; as Aaron Smith, no less, once said; ‘he’s the point of difference for both’. And, no question, that aura plays on the mind in both dressing rooms; that’s how exceptional he is.

Back in the days when RC Toulon were masters of the universe, their outré club President, Mourad Boudjellal, was asked about the influence of Jonny Wilkinson. ‘His magic isn’t really tangible,’ he said, without the slightest hint of irony. ‘It’s sprinkled above the entire team. If you play with Jonny Wilkinson you cannot come second, you cannot be average and you cannot fail because you’re a team protected by God.’

All a bit ‘Boudjellal’, no question, but you get where Mourad was coming from. And if Dupont isn’t yet a rugby God, he appears, at the very least, to be a close relation.