Antoine Dupont: “Jean Dujardin has been following us since the 2020 VI Nations tournament, he writes to me before and after all matches”

OK, let’s see it. Do you know the number of your selections?
Yes, anyway! 32.

Very good. how many attempts?
10.

good. How many matches in top 14?
There, I don’t know… 80?

I have 70 till date. how many attempts?
I don’t know… 15?

14! not bad. You really score a lot!
It is actually quite recent. With the France team, in the beginning, I was a substitute and we didn’t necessarily win matches, so I had to put all my efforts in blue during the last fifteen selections! And the same in a club. We talk about it a lot because I have never scored so much this year. so much the better! But, like I said, it’s easy to score when you’re in a rotating group, especially on my posts. There have been many attempts where I don’t do much, that’s where I am. It’s five points anyway, we agree, but when you have good partners, it gets easier.

Do you know the three teams you lost against and never won in the French team?
New Zealand, South Africa… and Fiji I guess.

That’s all. And a time against which you have never won or lost?
Japan.

exact. You know too well anyway!
I just have a good memory. Laugh I remember this stuff a lot.

I’d like to come back to a delicate episode of your career: In 2018, you had a major knee injury. Did you doubt the rest of your career?
At that point, I said to myself: “I’m out for eight months, I’m going to come back and it’ll be the same”. But when you are one month old and the leg is flat, when you reach three months and you have to support it and as soon as you put your leg down, it hurts, you bend the knee a lot. Can’t… You start telling yourself it can’t be easy. And when I start doing Sahara again and I hurt myself by hooking, there… then you train again, the first matches come, the pains are the first months… but I’m no such thing. I am the one who doesn’t think much. Without being necessarily cocky or overconfident, I didn’t question myself, I didn’t see why it wouldn’t return as before. I worked hard on my rehabilitation so that I can get back in shape. There were times of doubt but I remained positive. And before I started all over again, all the lights were green, which doesn’t happen to everyone, sometimes there are complications.