Antoine Dupont: “We are proud to represent this French team”

At a press conference, Antoine Dupont said everything about his pride after the heroic victory of the Blues against the double South African world champions, 21 to 19. “The atmosphere was crazy. To be able to share that with this stadium is incredible. The audience that was behind us, from La Marseillaise, we felt carried away. And I think that everyone who was present at the stadium and in front of their screen is proud this evening (Friday evening) to be French. We, on the ground, are proud to represent this French team with a state of mind that has been remarkable. We made individual mistakes, and even collective mistakes at times, but which were made up for by incredible energy. This is what allowed us to win. There are attitudes that are unmistakable. There is not a guy who cheated, who withdrew. We didn't give up on anything. We saw a great state of mind.”

Asked about his unprecedented association at the hinge with Maxime Lucu, the captain of the Blues was less laudatory. “We weren’t able to show the full range that we had worked on in training. We had few offensive sequences. We were able to score quickly, but we only had one real sequence where we held the ball and we ended up scoring too. As I said at the beginning, it was mainly about energy, state of mind. We tried to adapt with the one day of training we had, with some subtleties in attack, in defense, trying to do the best for the team. Of course it wasn't perfect, but it certainly allowed the team to win the match."