France up in a heap after Dupont disaster
APLUMP man in a brilliant pink jacket is shouting. Opposite him, a younger, urbane-looking chap tries to be heard by raising his voice. In between them, a struggling host in a creased white shirt attempts, vainly, to be noticed. Elsewhere around an enormous table, more people are dotted, but there is no coherence to the conversation.
There are, instead, flocks of panicked words, rising blindly into the air like startled birds. This is the sound of a country in crisis.
Antoine Dupont is hurt, and France is up in a heap.
One wondered what it would be like in Paris, one of the great metropolises where sport can struggle to get noticed. And when it does, it is football in this town, the great animating force of a fractured society in 1998, and again in 2018. Rugby has never wielded influence of that sort, and it still doesn’t.
But that does not mean it hasn’t made an impact, and along with the flags and bunting that are strung up faithfully at regular intervals along the most popular tourist streets, there is a deeper impact.
Successful teams are attractive, but it helps when they have powerful figureheads. They are Dupont and Fabien Galthié.
The head coach is credited with reviving a great rugby force that lurched incoherently from embarrassment to crisis for almost two decades. He commands public respect not only for returning the team to its tactical roots, but also for modernising the approach of the national team.
But where Galthié is admired, Dupont is adored.
He is the stocky boy wonder from the game’s southern heartlands, a kid born and moulded on the fields that made French rugby great.
Long-read profiles of Dupont abounded before the World Cup, and none turned up any sensation on the life of the 26-year-old.
Instead, he was born in a small town, excelled at the game, and progressed through junior teams to
Auch, before joining
Toulouse, the local superpower, when he was still a teenager.
There has been no drama, no controversy, and certainly no scandal. A four-match ban for taking out Cheslin Kolbe while the Springbok winger was still in the air was as close to disaster as he got – and the ban was halved on appeal, with Dupont distraught after the incident. But that was as nothing compared to what has unfolded over the last 72 hours.
The images of Dupont, devastated, minutes after the disgusting tackle by Johan Deysel of Namibia that fractured his jaw, have been played on a loop on TV here. Photos of the scrum-half on one knee, supporting himself by placing a hand on the leg of a medic while his face is examined, have been everywhere, as has the one of Dupont with a large ice-pack held up to his face. Rumours, half-truths and outlandish gossip have not only proliferated, but much of it has been reported, not as fact but as the latest whisper.
This speaks to a different media culture, but it also gives an idea of the effect this injury has had.
And it’s not just on that portion of the French population that likes rugby. The game struggles to be considered among the most popular sports in France, but Dupont has been a compelling symbol of not only a team, or their sport, but also the tournament that has been so warmly received in host cities throughout this vast country.
He is the World Cup for many casual supporters, so the sight of him stricken in Marseille on Thursday night has had a profound effect nationwide.
France has a vibrant media, with many sports channels, including one owned by the great sports paper, L’Équipe. It was on their programme minutes after the final whistle on Thursday that the scene described above took place.
There were six pundits and an anchor, but they only took to the air after live coverage of the postmatch press conference ended.
These are usually pedestrian affairs, but every one conducted by Galthié has been broadcast in full.
As he spoke about Dupont, he looked hollow. He was less concerned with the national reaction, than with what this means for his side. Without their great conductor, France are a reduced force in this competition.
There is resignation that he is gone for at least a month, but don’t be so sure. Antoine Dupont is so important, and so desperate to play in a home World Cup, that everything will be done to get him back.
Every step will be catalogued in extraordinary detail by a frazzled people.