Dupont is heading for greatness like Gareth
It has been reported with a high degree of certainty that Aaron Smith, an undeniably brilliant New Zealand half-back with a century of caps to his name, tunes into French club rugby so he can watch Antoine Dupont being better than brilliant in the same role.
Is this televisual access included in his All Blacks contract? If not, can he write it off against tax? Does he really have nothing better to do with his time? The questions come thick and fast.
The biggest question will surely have an answer by the time the French finish hosting the World Cup in a little over 18 months. The smart money says that by tournament’s end, Dupont will have been formally anointed as the finest No.9 since Gareth Edwards stuck his flag on the summit of scrum-halfery.
From memory, the Welshman’s rise to supremacy was interrupted only by occasional outbreaks of “Christmas hamstring”. Dupont’s ascent seems equally inevitable, if not more so.
It would be lovely to think that Smith and Dupont will engage in a “championship of each other”, as the boxing scribes described the Ali-Frazier rivalry. Modern rugby produces few individual struggles of this kind, sadly: rarity value is the essential ingredient, but the “more is more” philosophy to which the game’s governing class is wholly in thrall has achieved alchemy in reverse by turning gold into base metal.
And besides, Smith will be 34 this autumn and the weight of the eight years he has on Dupont can only increase with each passing block of demanding fixtures. Will he still be a first-choice All Black when the jamboree begins in Paris? At this distance, there is no way of knowing.
There have been times over the last decade when the New Zealander appeared to meet the boldest claims made by his supporters: that he was better than the most accomplished of his contemporaries – Fourie du Preez of South Africa, Will Genia of Australia and, briefly but thrillingly, Kahn Fotuali’i of Samoa – and that he deserved to be mentioned in the same breath as the most revered of his silver-ferned forerunners, from Chris Laidlaw and Sid Going to the wonderful Dave Loveridge.
But Dupont has gone faster and further since embarking on his business with Les Bleus in 2017. Heaven knows, the French have produced some extraordinary No.9s – which is as it should be, scrum-half being the key decision-making position in their game – but no one on the far side of the water is arguing that the titans of old were better than the current bloke.
“Dupont makes a Gareth-like mess of all-comers... no one would pick a World XV without him in it”
He is, by common consent, superior to Jacques Fouroux, Jerome Gallion and Pierre Berbizier.
There are those who maintain that Dupont has yet to piece together a body of work comprehensive enough to justify the Hosannas shouted in his direction. They have a point. We are a long way from a final accounting, not least because Dupont has yet to reach the mid-point of his career. Even so, he already has the best part of 40 caps in his bottom drawer – Edwards, left, earned 50-odd with Wales and another ten with the Lions – and continues to make a Gareth-like mess of all-comers despite the vast amount of analysis devoted to a cramping of his style.
Just as striking are the similarities, in instinct and awareness as well as physique, between the Welshman from Gwaun Cae Gurwen and the Frenchman from Lannemezan. The low-slung pinball quality, the freakish strength in what might be called the hips-and-bum department, the ability to distract defenders tight to the forward contest and break tackles at will around the edges – all of these things speak of a glorious past revisited.
If anything, Dupont is blessed with more pace and a greater range of footwork: gifts that make him a longrange danger across the open prairies as well as a short-range threat in heavy traffic.
If it turns out that he also possesses the low cunning and tactical mastery that allowed his singularly unconventional countryman Dimitri Yachvili to win games on his own despite an air of physical frailty – how, in the name of all that is holy, did he kick the ball so far with legs so thin you could knit with them? – he will stand every chance of commanding a place among rugby’s Chosen Few of the last 50 years.
And who might he join, up there in the pantheon? We’re talking Jonah, of course, and Michael Jones and John Eales; Sean Fitzpatrick and Robert Paparemborde; Dan Carter and Tim Horan; Serge Blanco and Gareth and very few others. No pressure, then.
Dupont will fall off his level at some point: the law of gravity, what goes up, blah blah. But right now, no one would name a World XV without him in it.
That includes those in New Zealand who struggle to believe that anyone plays the game better than the All Blacks play it. Which is saying something.