Latest footage reveals Antoine Dupont is human after all
Many people feel France’s Antoine Dupont already has one hand on the World Rugby player of the year award, but to those who think the scrum-half is not actually human, some evidence came out this week that proves otherwise.
While the 25-year-old has proven he is almost untouchable on the pitch this year, his ultimate weakness was laid bare for all to see at the weekend and that is he is not very good at coin tosses.
Ahead of the match against the All Blacks at the Stade de France, the Frenchman struggled to perform the coin toss, accidentally dropping the coin on the floor. This led to Wayne Barnes actually miming a coin toss to help the France captain. This may bring a crumb of comfort to those that feel inferior to the European player of the year, as while most will be unable to match his standards on the pitch, they can at least flip a coin off it.
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Unfortunately for the All Blacks, Dupont’s blunders seemed to stop at the coin toss, as he was imperious in France’s 40-25 win. It was a performance that will help his chances when it comes to the player of the year award, where he is competing with England’s Maro Itoje, and the Australian duo of Michael Hooper and Samu Kerevi.
France blew New Zealand away in the first half, which was one of the main areas of concern for head coach Ian Foster. He also cited mental fatigue as a problem after an exceptionally long and complex season.
He said: “Before we got to the last two Tests I was delighted with the progress, but we’ve had a couple of good lessons in the last two Tests. There’s no doubt there’s a little mental fatigue at the end of a long season and there’s also no doubt we struck two teams that played good rugby against us.”