France buoyed by disconsolate Antoine Dupont to beat Ireland – Gregory Alldritt
Dupoint was helped off after suffering a first-half knee injury in the Six Nations clash.
Gregory Alldritt believes the sight of injured captain Antoine Dupont sitting disconsolate in the changing room fuelled France’s second-half annihilation of Ireland in Dublin.
Scrum-half Dupont – widely regarded as the world’s best player – was helped from the pitch in the 29th minute after suffering serious knee damage at the Aviva Stadium on Saturday.
France were furious with the incident which caused the injury and intend to refer Ireland pair Tadhg Beirne and Andrew Porter to the citing commissioner for possible retrospective punishment.
“When I return to the dressing room and I see one of my best friends looking like that, it tears up one’s insides,” said Alldritt, who took over as skipper after Dupont’s exit.
“It is difficult to talk about. However, it added a bit of fire to our bellies for the second half.”
Dupont was visibly upset when he limped from the field after Beirne, who appeared to be pushed by team-mate Porter, fell on his right leg during a ruck clearout, causing it to buckle.
According to team-mates, the 28-year-old was in tears in the dressing room.
France are awaiting the full extent of the issue but fear it is likely to result in a lengthy absence.
Les Bleus head coach Fabien Galthie also said Ireland wing Calvin Nash would be cited in his side’s post-match report after he was shown a yellow card for head-on-head contact which ended Pierre-Louis Barassi’s participation.
Having finished second to Ireland in the last two championships, France can claim their first silverware since the 2022 Grand Slam at home to Scotland next weekend.
A pair of Louis Bielle-Biarrey tries in addition to further scores from Paul Boudehent, Oscar Jegou and Damian Penaud and 17 points from full-back Thomas Ramos secured Saturday’s success.
“It is something historic, I think one should not take this as banal what happened,” said Alldritt.
“Before the game we were masters of our destiny. We were getting a little fed up to fall short from time to time in huge matches.
“It is not over but we are where we wanted to be, at least after the England match (a 26-25 loss in round two).”
Ireland interim head coach Simon Easterby said: “All teams try and do it to a point, where they try and create a bit of space through the ruck and that allows the next person to pick.
“It’s just a judge of whether that contact on Pete was close enough to the ruck for them to feel it was legal; it was probably about three or four metres from the ruck.
“That’s something we’ll reflect on and feed back to Angus Gardner and his assistant referees.”
