This was supposed to be a piece on Antoine Dupont. You are meant to be reading here about the world’s best rugby player because that’s what happens when the world’s best rugby player turns up on your doorstep. The stone-cold galacticos don’t happen by this neighbourhood every week – win, lose or draw, you write about them when they do.
Unless he goes off injured, of course. Or more to the point, unless he goes off injured in the 26th minute having spent most the match up to that point in a defensive posture while Ireland had the ball. Dupont’s highlights were a lovely pass out left to Louis Bielle-Biarrey for the opening try and a viciously whipped behind-the-back number to Romain Ntamack just before he got hurt. Pleasing on the eye but thin enough gruel for our purposes here.
[ French power game blows Ireland off the park as Grand Slam hopes obliteratedOpens in new window ]
Funny enough, even while Dupont was on the pitch there would have been enough cause to switch tack and focus on Bielle-Biarrey anyway. Had Dupont stayed in the full of his health, he’d have had to conjure up a significant tonnage of magic to outshine the leggy winger in the red scrum cap. By the time the 80 minutes were up, Bielle-Biarrey was the obvious man of the match.
It wasn’t just his two tries that did it. You could make the argument that of course a winger of his standing should be running in a couple of tries in a rout, especially in the two periods when Ireland were down to 14 men. Add in the fact that one of the sinner-binners was his opposite number Calvin Nash, then maybe you could say he was just doing his job. Postman delivers post. Big whoop.
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But good luck finding yourself a postie who nails the letterbox with this kind of style and élan. You couldn’t take your eyes off Bielle-Biarrey here. Even in the early phases, when Ireland were pounding the French line and everything was under siege, Bielle-Biarrey pulled off a brilliant tackle on Hugo Keenan to keep the scoresheet clean.
Once the tide receded and France started to get hands on the ball in the Irish half, Bielle-Biarrey wasted no time in whistling past the home side’s cover. Thomas Ramos came into the line to feed him and just like that, out came the first of several chip-throughs that caused Ireland trouble all afternoon.
Joe McCarthy was chugging along behind Ramos and pulled the French fullback by the collar, like a sixth-year boarder yanking a specky day boy out of the canteen queue. It was the kind of thing that might be considered smart if you get away with it but looks pretty dopey if the TMO hasn’t had a few brandies with lunch. McCarthy saw a yellow card for his troubles and now France could really start going to work.
They kicked to the corner, worked a lineout maul to leave Bielle-Biarray standing lonely as a cloud out on the left wing, where Dupont found him with a fizzed right-to-left pass. Bielle-Biarray ran it in and France were ahead, despite all the Irish huffing and puffing.
He’s an unlikely-looking rugby star, Bielle-Biarray. Take the scrum cap off and he has the cut of a 16-year-old academy footballer, or maybe a boy band wannabe. He has the sort of doe-eyes that keep the socials heaving with heart emojis and his physique doesn’t look built to survive a run-in with Bundee Aki anytime soon.
And yet, here he is, leading the Six Nations in tries scored with seven already in four matches. That’s two against us, two against England, two against Wales and only one in the turkey shoot over Italy. He is level with Jacob Stockdale’s championship record and still has a round to go. It’s hard to imagine him not finding at least one more next week against the Scots to take the record outright.
But there’s more to him than finishing. He has a strain of madness in there somewhere too, never more so than when he attempted (and pulled off) a cross-kick back over his own try line to Damian Penaud soon after his try. It was like watching a snooker player attempt an escape off four cushions – impressive, if probably not strictly necessary.
By now, he was motoring. One chip through before half-time saw Peter O’Mahony catch him late but there was nothing doing with the referee, who correctly called it an honest attempt at a block-down. But he was never going to by hemmed in for long and when Nash went to the bin early in the second half, he feasted on the extra room to score his second try.
Again, it was a chip-and-chase. This time, he skinned Robbie Henshaw on the outside, grubbered infield with the outside of his right boot and not only beat Sam Prendergast to touch it down but his own team-mate Maxime Lucu as well. It was a stunning piece of work, a bravura show of sorcery not even the great Dupont could have pulled off.
“I got good ball to play,” he aw-shucksed afterwards. “I know it’s my job to finish off. I tried to do my best.”
Succeeded too, you mad thing.
