SATURDAY’S CHAMPIONS CUP final pits two of the world’s best scrum-halves against each other and while nobody ever doubted that Toulouse’s Antoine Dupont would one day be playing on the game’s biggest stages, the same cannot be said for Leinster nine Jamison Gibson-Park.
Dupont was a child prodigy who always looked destined for great things while Gibson-Park followed a different road to the top. Indeed, it was only when Gibson-Park was in his late 20s that his true potential became evident.
Yet one thing they both have in common is that at one point in their young careers they thought about packing it all in.
For Dupont that moment came when he was just eight years old. The reason? It was all just proving a bit too easy.
Dupont grew up rugby-mad in Castelnau-Magnoac, a small town in the foothills of the Pyrenees. Last year, locals recalled to The Times how a young Dupont would “always be dodging in and out of the cars with a ball in his hand” outside the family-owned Hotel Dupont in the village square.
Rugby was the primary sport in the town and by the time Dupont was eight he’d outgrown the local youth teams. With a switch to football on the cards his coaches responded by promoting him to U10s. Still Dupont proved too good, running the pitch at will anytime he got his hands on the ball. Eventually the rules were tweaked in a bid to curb Dupont’s dominance, with a minimum number of passes required before a try could be scored.
Even then, it was clear there was something special about the kid. What followed was simply what everyone expected.
********
Gibson-Park’s crossroads moment arrived in his mid-teens, with the crucial difference being that if had decided to walk, he might not have met much resistance.
He grew up in rural surroundings on New Zealand’s Great Barrier Island before the family moved to the mainland when he was 10. Gibson-Park was a small kid in Gisborne High School and has reflected on those days with The 42. At a time when size was the big focus for coaches, Gibson-Park remembers being told “‘You’re not big enough’, all that craic.”
The young Gibson-Park was fast and athletic and felt his qualities might be better suited to a different sport, so stepped away from the game for a year. When he went back to give it another go, he started to make representative teams and his slow path to the top of the game began to take shape.
********
Dupont became a star everywhere he went. At 14 he was playing his rugby 40 kilometers away from home in Auch, where Anthony Jelonch, Grégory Alldritt and Pierre Bourgarit were also learning their craft. Dupont shone in their underage tournaments and word soon spread of this precocious talent. In 2014 Top 14 champions Castres snapped him up and that season he made his European debut against Leinster at the age of just 17. ‘Toto’ enjoyed three full seasons at Castres where he made a strong impression despite never becoming first-choice nine, bringing an impressive physical edge alongside his eye-catching skillset.
Dupont playing for Castres against Leinster in 2016. Tommy Dickson / INPHO
Tommy Dickson / INPHO / INPHO
Former Scotland international Johnnie Beattie was a teammate of Dupont’s at the time and previously told The 42 that “Even early on it was very, very clear that he was going to be special.
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“He was explosive, dynamic, could step off both feet, could bump, could fend, could chuck big French forwards out of the way. Physically he was a complete monster for a 5’8″ kid.”
In 2017 Toulouse came calling and Dupont – signing in the same summer as All Black prop Charlie Faumuina and South Africa’s Cheslin Kolbe – prepared to go stratospheric. Two years after his arrival, Toulouse ended a seven-year wait for the Top 14 title.
The move to Toulouse came in the same year as his Test debut, a 20-year-old Dupont coming off the bench twice in that year’s Six Nations. He earned his first starts for France against New Zealand and South Africa later that year but the real breakthrough came in 2019, with Fabien Galthié making him a focal point of a new-look, young French designed with the 2023 World Cup in mind.
By the time that tournament arrived Dupont was the poster boy of French rugby.
********
After leaving school Gibson-Park spent three years playing with Taranaki and was signed by the Blues in 2013, where he started six games across two seasons before joining the Hurricanes in 2015. During his one season in Wellington Gibson-Park featured 15 times, with every one of those appearances coming off the bench. It’s fair to say there would have been a lot of Googling by Leinster supporters when the province announced his signature in 2016.
Jamison Gibson-Park playing for the Hurricanes in 2016. Alamy Stock Photo
Alamy Stock Photo
Former Leinster coach Stuart Lancaster felt Gibson-Park arrived from New Zealand with the mindset “that he was always number two”. The player himself remembers being “a little bit star-struck” when he first met Johnny Sexton.
He remained number two for his early years at Leinster, playing support to Luke McGrath, before Andy Farrell drafted him into the Ireland camp. It wasn’t an obvious call-up. Indeed, it’s worth remembering that Gibson-Park became eligible to play for Ireland in August 2019 – a month before that year’s World Cup kicked off in Japan – but didn’t make an Ireland squad until October 2020.
His impact was transformative. Gibson-Park quickly settled into Test rugby and when a hamstring injury ruled Conor Murray out of some games in the 2021 Six Nations, he stepped up as the starting nine and has never lost grip of the shirt.
The scrum-half’s speed of play suited the game Farrell was looking to implement but he had also worked hard on improving his overall skillset. Having grown up as a nine who liked to run with the ball, Gibson-Park found his boot become an increasingly important weapon for both Leinster and Ireland.
“Having come from New Zealand into a game where a box-kicking nine is pretty important, it probably would never have been earlier in my career, and to be honest it probably wasn’t great,” he told The 42 last year.
It’s now one of the strongest parts of his game, but it’s the Kiwi spark that sets him apart.
********
Over the last two years Gibson-Park’s career-best form has led to comparisons with Dupont, with both players capable of producing game-changing moments of brilliance off the cuff. Dupont remains a lethal running threat with a passing range few can match, but his smart support lines and remarkable physicality – best displayed in his try-saving tackle on Mack Hansen in the 2023 Six Nations – are the added layers which elevate him above the competition. The French maestro is arguably the best to have ever played the sport.
Gibson-Park isn’t in that bracket but his current form has pushed him to a new level. The player who for so long saw himself as a number two is now playing with the belief needed to be a game-changing scrum-half, his quick-thinking leading to decisive moments in the biggest games.
“Knowing when to go off-script is only part of the challenge,” Gibson-Park previously explained.
You also need the confidence and clear-mindedness to pull it off when there’s bodies crashing into each other all around you.
“I think that’s probably been my biggest area of growth over the last number of years, to be honest with you. Just trying to be calm in the middle of it all. It can be pretty chaotic at times so it’s just doing my best to stay calm and use my eyes and ears.”
“When you think about a New Zealand upbringing, it’s a lot of touch rugby in the yard,” explains fellow New Zealander Andrew Goodman, who has been running the Leinster attack for the last two seasons.
“You’re just throwing the ball around and playing. It leads into that kind of play. It’s encouraged back home. That’s not to say it’s not encouraged back here, but I think probably a bit of the upbringing there as well.”
Gibson-Park stole the show when Leinster beat Northampton in Croke Park, providing two wonderfully sharp assists for James Lowe and dictating the play beautifully.
Gibson-Park was at his influential best against Northampton Saints. Alamy Stock Photo
Alamy Stock Photo
Leinster appear to be running more of their play through Gibson-Park this season – perhaps a product of losing Sexton to retirement.
“When the boys get front-foot ball for him, he’s got licence to play and try to encourage the boys in that moment to play the picture that they see,” adds Goodman.
“I think he does that really well and guys are probably reacting better off him now as well, because they know they’ve got to stay in or around him, because he’s going to have a snipe at some stage and he’s got really good relationships with certain people in the team that he links up with well.
“Off the back of a Joe McCarthy doing something, he often is there to play instinctively and I think that’s sometimes when we’re at our best. When we’re out of structure and just playing instinctively, and what’s in front of us.”
This weekend in London Dupont and Gibson-Park will go up against each other at the peak of their powers. Dupont has been the box-office star throughout his career, but now Gibson-Park has played himself into the same high billing.
“He’s been outstanding. Consistently outstanding,” says Goodman
“That consistency of performance is top in games and the influence he is having, and the amount of big moments he is having in games has been incredible really.
“He doesn’t over complicate it, he doesn’t overthink things. He is one of those guys that sees it [and plays it]. Brendon McCullum, a cricketer in New Zealand, used to say ‘see it, hit it’. He’s that kind of rugby player, he’ll see it and he’ll take the opportunities.
“He doesn’t overthink things too much, he’s just a play what’s in front, understand the moment guy, which is what you need in your nine and at 10.”
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Dupont and Gibson-Park: Two world class 9s, two different paths to the top
SATURDAY’S CHAMPIONS CUP final pits two of the world’s best scrum-halves against each other and while nobody ever doubted that Toulouse’s Antoine Dupont would one day be playing on the game’s biggest stages, the same cannot be said for Leinster nine Jamison Gibson-Park.
Dupont was a child prodigy who always looked destined for great things while Gibson-Park followed a different road to the top. Indeed, it was only when Gibson-Park was in his late 20s that his true potential became evident.
Yet one thing they both have in common is that at one point in their young careers they thought about packing it all in.
For Dupont that moment came when he was just eight years old. The reason? It was all just proving a bit too easy.
Dupont grew up rugby-mad in Castelnau-Magnoac, a small town in the foothills of the Pyrenees. Last year, locals recalled to The Times how a young Dupont would “always be dodging in and out of the cars with a ball in his hand” outside the family-owned Hotel Dupont in the village square.
Rugby was the primary sport in the town and by the time Dupont was eight he’d outgrown the local youth teams. With a switch to football on the cards his coaches responded by promoting him to U10s. Still Dupont proved too good, running the pitch at will anytime he got his hands on the ball. Eventually the rules were tweaked in a bid to curb Dupont’s dominance, with a minimum number of passes required before a try could be scored.
Even then, it was clear there was something special about the kid. What followed was simply what everyone expected.
********
Gibson-Park’s crossroads moment arrived in his mid-teens, with the crucial difference being that if had decided to walk, he might not have met much resistance.
He grew up in rural surroundings on New Zealand’s Great Barrier Island before the family moved to the mainland when he was 10. Gibson-Park was a small kid in Gisborne High School and has reflected on those days with The 42. At a time when size was the big focus for coaches, Gibson-Park remembers being told “‘You’re not big enough’, all that craic.”
The young Gibson-Park was fast and athletic and felt his qualities might be better suited to a different sport, so stepped away from the game for a year. When he went back to give it another go, he started to make representative teams and his slow path to the top of the game began to take shape.
********
Dupont became a star everywhere he went. At 14 he was playing his rugby 40 kilometers away from home in Auch, where Anthony Jelonch, Grégory Alldritt and Pierre Bourgarit were also learning their craft. Dupont shone in their underage tournaments and word soon spread of this precocious talent. In 2014 Top 14 champions Castres snapped him up and that season he made his European debut against Leinster at the age of just 17. ‘Toto’ enjoyed three full seasons at Castres where he made a strong impression despite never becoming first-choice nine, bringing an impressive physical edge alongside his eye-catching skillset.
Former Scotland international Johnnie Beattie was a teammate of Dupont’s at the time and previously told The 42 that “Even early on it was very, very clear that he was going to be special.
“He was explosive, dynamic, could step off both feet, could bump, could fend, could chuck big French forwards out of the way. Physically he was a complete monster for a 5’8″ kid.”
In 2017 Toulouse came calling and Dupont – signing in the same summer as All Black prop Charlie Faumuina and South Africa’s Cheslin Kolbe – prepared to go stratospheric. Two years after his arrival, Toulouse ended a seven-year wait for the Top 14 title.
The move to Toulouse came in the same year as his Test debut, a 20-year-old Dupont coming off the bench twice in that year’s Six Nations. He earned his first starts for France against New Zealand and South Africa later that year but the real breakthrough came in 2019, with Fabien Galthié making him a focal point of a new-look, young French designed with the 2023 World Cup in mind.
By the time that tournament arrived Dupont was the poster boy of French rugby.
********
After leaving school Gibson-Park spent three years playing with Taranaki and was signed by the Blues in 2013, where he started six games across two seasons before joining the Hurricanes in 2015. During his one season in Wellington Gibson-Park featured 15 times, with every one of those appearances coming off the bench. It’s fair to say there would have been a lot of Googling by Leinster supporters when the province announced his signature in 2016.
Former Leinster coach Stuart Lancaster felt Gibson-Park arrived from New Zealand with the mindset “that he was always number two”. The player himself remembers being “a little bit star-struck” when he first met Johnny Sexton.
He remained number two for his early years at Leinster, playing support to Luke McGrath, before Andy Farrell drafted him into the Ireland camp. It wasn’t an obvious call-up. Indeed, it’s worth remembering that Gibson-Park became eligible to play for Ireland in August 2019 – a month before that year’s World Cup kicked off in Japan – but didn’t make an Ireland squad until October 2020.
His impact was transformative. Gibson-Park quickly settled into Test rugby and when a hamstring injury ruled Conor Murray out of some games in the 2021 Six Nations, he stepped up as the starting nine and has never lost grip of the shirt.
The scrum-half’s speed of play suited the game Farrell was looking to implement but he had also worked hard on improving his overall skillset. Having grown up as a nine who liked to run with the ball, Gibson-Park found his boot become an increasingly important weapon for both Leinster and Ireland.
“Having come from New Zealand into a game where a box-kicking nine is pretty important, it probably would never have been earlier in my career, and to be honest it probably wasn’t great,” he told The 42 last year.
It’s now one of the strongest parts of his game, but it’s the Kiwi spark that sets him apart.
********
Over the last two years Gibson-Park’s career-best form has led to comparisons with Dupont, with both players capable of producing game-changing moments of brilliance off the cuff. Dupont remains a lethal running threat with a passing range few can match, but his smart support lines and remarkable physicality – best displayed in his try-saving tackle on Mack Hansen in the 2023 Six Nations – are the added layers which elevate him above the competition. The French maestro is arguably the best to have ever played the sport.
Gibson-Park isn’t in that bracket but his current form has pushed him to a new level. The player who for so long saw himself as a number two is now playing with the belief needed to be a game-changing scrum-half, his quick-thinking leading to decisive moments in the biggest games.
“Knowing when to go off-script is only part of the challenge,” Gibson-Park previously explained.
“I think that’s probably been my biggest area of growth over the last number of years, to be honest with you. Just trying to be calm in the middle of it all. It can be pretty chaotic at times so it’s just doing my best to stay calm and use my eyes and ears.”
“When you think about a New Zealand upbringing, it’s a lot of touch rugby in the yard,” explains fellow New Zealander Andrew Goodman, who has been running the Leinster attack for the last two seasons.
“You’re just throwing the ball around and playing. It leads into that kind of play. It’s encouraged back home. That’s not to say it’s not encouraged back here, but I think probably a bit of the upbringing there as well.”
Gibson-Park stole the show when Leinster beat Northampton in Croke Park, providing two wonderfully sharp assists for James Lowe and dictating the play beautifully.
Leinster appear to be running more of their play through Gibson-Park this season – perhaps a product of losing Sexton to retirement.
“When the boys get front-foot ball for him, he’s got licence to play and try to encourage the boys in that moment to play the picture that they see,” adds Goodman.
“I think he does that really well and guys are probably reacting better off him now as well, because they know they’ve got to stay in or around him, because he’s going to have a snipe at some stage and he’s got really good relationships with certain people in the team that he links up with well.
“Off the back of a Joe McCarthy doing something, he often is there to play instinctively and I think that’s sometimes when we’re at our best. When we’re out of structure and just playing instinctively, and what’s in front of us.”
This weekend in London Dupont and Gibson-Park will go up against each other at the peak of their powers. Dupont has been the box-office star throughout his career, but now Gibson-Park has played himself into the same high billing.
“He’s been outstanding. Consistently outstanding,” says Goodman
“That consistency of performance is top in games and the influence he is having, and the amount of big moments he is having in games has been incredible really.
“He doesn’t over complicate it, he doesn’t overthink things. He is one of those guys that sees it [and plays it]. Brendon McCullum, a cricketer in New Zealand, used to say ‘see it, hit it’. He’s that kind of rugby player, he’ll see it and he’ll take the opportunities.
“He doesn’t overthink things too much, he’s just a play what’s in front, understand the moment guy, which is what you need in your nine and at 10.”
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