France captain Antoine Dupont suffered a potentially serious knee injury in his team’s Six Nations clash against Ireland at the Aviva Stadium, an angry coach Fabien Galthie confirmed.
The mercurial scrum half limped off the pitch just before the half hour and was replaced by Maxime Lucu, leaving the 7-1 French bench with six forwards.
France’s hopes in a must-win game looked in trouble when Dupont hobbled out after 27 minutes and Ireland led early in the second half but three tries in 12 minutes from Paul Boudehent, Louis Bielle-Biarrey and Oscar Jegou left the ill-disciplined Irish stunned and with their grand slam dreams in tatters.
Damian Penaud put the icing on the cake, equalling Serge Blanco’s French record of 38 tries before two late Irish tries flattered a scoreboard that contained more French points in Dublin than ever before in a game most had predicted would be decided by far fewer.
“We’re suspecting something serious. He’s suffering,” Galthie confirmed in the post-match press conference.
“We named the players [who made contact with Dupont], Tadhg Beirne and Andrew Porter, who should appear before the disciplinary commission.
“We want explanations, so we’ve named two players. We have to protect our players. There are means, there are rules… There is some kind of anger.
“I’m not going to pass judgement on the quality of the refereeing today,” he added when asked about Angus Gardner’s decisions.
Simon Easterby disagreed with his counterpart’s assessment.
“I think it’s just a rugby incident,” interim Ireland coach Easterby said. “Tadhg cleans out someone in front of Antoine Dupont and he gets hit off the back of it. It happens, unfortunately.
“Players have a real awareness now of clearing out on the lower limb of the player, which can create that type of injury, but that wasn’t the case. He was securing his own ball and not making contact on Dupont. It’s just one of those things unfortunately. It happens in the game.”
Reuters
