The one person who would not declare Antoine Dupont to be the greatest rugby player of all-time is Antoine Dupont, as reliable a witness as he is sumptuous a rugby player. The French scrum-half has seemingly got it all – pace, strength, verve, awareness, cussedness, le combat spirit, delicacy and subtlety, nuance to go with the knuckle, humility to go with the bravura. He’s got French titles to his name, European ones too and, yes, don’t we know it and didn’t we love it, an Olympic bit of gold around his neck.
But what he hasn’t got, of course, is a World Cup winners’ medal. And while that remains the case – roll on Australia in 2027 – then his entry ticket to rugby’s Mount Rushmore is yet to be stamped. He’s good, great actually but has he yet done what Jonah Lomu did (yes, I know, no World Cup but wow to everything else) or Dan Carter or Pieter-Steph du Toit? Has he even won a Test match in the southern hemisphere? (No, is the answer).
What about the claims of Joost van der Westhuizen or David Campese? Or Gareth and Barry and Phil and JPR? Some GOAT candidates there. Martin Johnson and John Eales as a dreamland second-row pairing? Let’s hear it for a few front-row sluggers, too, unseen, inconspicuous but nothing happens without them, be it a Sean Fitzpatrick or a Robert Paparemborde.
While we’re at it Willie John McBride doesn’t rate too badly from another era, a Lion that roared alongside others who have rightful claim on greatness such as Mighty Mouse or Big Fran. Jackie Kyle, perhaps the most unassuming fly-half of all time but a master of his kingdom for Ireland and the Lions in the late forties and fifties? Cliff Morgan, who knew a thing or two about a lot of things from Welsh fly-half play to running BBC Sport, reckoned Kyle was the best of all.
There are few advantages to getting old and creaky and grumpy but a sense of historical perspective is one of them. You’ve either been lucky enough to see the greats in the flesh or had TV or radio highlights to rely on or heard tell of rare feats from afar on foreign fields. A clutch of great Springboks for your fancy – Hennie Muller or Frik de Preez, chiselling performances from themselves and those around them that were invariably fierce and all-consuming. What of Fourie du Preez, a Springbok No 9 that stands shoulder-to-shoulder with Dupont in terms of his influence?
Dupont is a fine, fine player. Of course he is. But let’s not get carried away with how significant sevens actually is or exaggerate just how difficult it is to transition from XVs to the abbreviated code. The biggest impediment is one of time. Simple as that. You can’t really play both. You need a modified form of conditioning and you need to get used to your team-mates and them to you.
Most of the back-line players listed above – the Edwards and the Carters – would be able to cope, Gareth, in particular, for he had a remarkably similar skill-set to Dupont: a low-slung centre of gravity, prodigious thrust through the hips, innate athletic prowess but, above all else, they are able to read the play. They know what is going to happen before other mere mortals and they know how to make it happen. That could have been Edwards himself in a Wales shirt seeing the gap as Dupont did early in the second-half against Fiji and scooting down the blindside to tee up a try. The Frenchman’s subsequent two tries had little to do with specialist sevens knowledge and everything to do with strength, grit and sporting savvy.
Seeing Dupont thrive and the Stade de France rise was a precious experience. He deserved the acclaim and the Parisians deserved a ray of sunshine on a soggy weekend. But let’s hold fire on GOAT accolades. Let’s be cautious too of trying to shoehorn more sevens into the calendar. World Rugby have enough trouble sorting the regular XVs schedule. They’ve only taken the best part of 30 years since professionalism arrived and it’s still something of a Horlicks.
So, let’s just enjoy the Olympic moment for what it was – a bit of theatre. Dupont’s play was the thing of the night. But those revels should now be ended.
