THE OFFICIAL OPENING ceremony of the Paris Olympics is not for another couple of days, but we can call today’s Rugby Sevens action at the Stade de France the unofficial starting formalities given they were performed by Antoine Dupont.
Sure, there were 12 different nations playing twice across a blitz of action there, but – and with sincere apologies to Hugo Keenan – who else but Dupont else could draw a capacity crowd to the Stade de France at 3.30pm on a Wednesday afternoon?
France’s square-jawed rugby genius has edified the entire Games by his mere presence with the French Sevens team, and you get the sense that winning an Olympic gold in Paris would be a belated balm for the World Cup disappointment of last Autumn. That consolation is not necessarily for Dupont, but for every other rugby lover in France.
But based on what unfolded in Saint Denis today, that gold medal is likely to be another thwarted shot at glory.
Slash the 15s game to seven players if you want, but you still can’t win with a one-man team. In fairness, what a curious experience this must have been for Dupont’s low-profile team-mates. Where else would they have experienced a crowd this big, and a crowd this expectant? There’s a reason rocket boosters eventually detach after launching someone else into space.
What is routine to Dupont would naturally be daunting for his team-mates and, as a result, France were fitful and clammy. First they were held to a draw by the United States in their opening game and left clinging on for dear life for a win against Uruguay. France will qualify for tomorrow night’s quarter-finals, but based on today’s play, all of Fiji, New Zealand, Argentina, Australia and, yes, Ireland look better medal bets than the hosts.
Ireland opened with an arm-wrestle, 10-5 win over South Africa and then heavily rotated for the evening game against Japan, against whom they initially toiled before striding clear for a 40-5 victory, led by the irrepressible Terry Kennedy.
Ireland will be outsiders when they New Zealand in their final pool game tomorrow afternoon, a game which will decide quarter-final opponents later that evening. If Ireland top their pool they will face one of the third-placed sides in the last eight, whereas if they finish second they will play the side to top Pool C, which will either be Fiji or France.
It was a good thing that Dupont was here to jolt the atmosphere. Sevens is otherwise a bit like the glassy-eyed binge of a mediocre American network TV show, where the episodes deliver enough diverting entertainment to keep the remote out of reach but are otherwise too short to allow you get fully invested in the characters.
Before the Dupont show, the French crowd entertained themselves by lustily booing Argentina, after some members of the nation’s football team sang a racist song mocking France during celebrations of their Copa America victory earlier this month. Argentina’s opponents, Kenya, might have been shocked at the intensity of their support. It carried them halfway to a major upset, but their two-point lead at the break was first slashed and then smithereened, and Argentina ran out 31-12 winners.
Dupont then took centre stage for his side’s opening game against the USA. France, perhaps in a nod to the smiles suddenly dancing across faces in the crowd, took to the field in a kit the colour of toothpaste.
Sevens deprives the crowd of seeing Dupont’s expert kicking game: the trade-off is the agreement you get to see him throw the ball about a bit more. Within minutes he almost created the first French try, stooping and flinging the ball out to the right touchline, only for Jefferson-Lee Joseph to fumble the ball and ultimately the opportunity.
Even in a game as rich in space as sevens, it was Dupont to whom France turned to find it. He created their first try of the second-half by delaying a half-second in midfield to draw a second tackler before offloading into space, which ended with Rayan Rebbadj crossing. Perhaps this was made easier by the fact incontrovertibly proved by the size of the crowd: Antonie Dupont has his own gravitational pull.
Minutes later, France butchered another Dupont-trademarked chance, knocking on close to the line after Dupont took out a couple of American players with a slickly disguised reverse pass. He was withdrawn with three minutes remaining, his final act a full-stretch chop tackle on a rampant Kevon Williams to prevent a try. It was at this point that things fell apart: France contrived to lose possession in their own 22 and Marcus Tupuola crossed to level the game at 12-12. The USA could hardly believe their luck, to the point that they kicked the ball dead to escape with a draw, much to the disapproval of the French crowd.
The French players then had the luxury of filing off down the tunnel to begin their recovery ahead of their second match, but Dupont had to slowly work his way down a line of broadcast interviews pitchside.
“It was incredible when we saw this stadium full”, he said. “But we made too many mistakes, we will have to improve our level of play.”
Alas. While France’s gold medal dreams remain alive in theory, a ragged 19-12 win over Uruguay in their evening game only went to make everyone invested in this French team feel a little queasier. France ended up clinging on in the endgame against a side brutalised 40-12 by Fiji earlier in the day, breathing a massive sigh of relief when Dupont’s replacement, Stephen Parez Edo Maertin, single-handedly turned the ball over from a Uruguayan scrum in the game’s final play.
Otherwise it was another stressed and anxious performance from France, rife with handling errors and an occasional timidity. France actually trailed at half-time before Dupont put them back in front with a try of comic-book virtuosity: he took the ball just over the halfway line and sprinted clear, stopping first to fend off one tackler before then shucking off an even larger one before crossing under the post for a guaranteed seven points. He could have passed the ball to one of his support runners…but where would the fun be in that? Dupont was quickly subbed, and as he sat on the bench with his chest heaving, the cost of his intervention became clear.
This time France clung on without Dupont, though on the basis of today’s performances they will qualify behind pool rivals Fiji, whom they play tomorrow afternoon. Rugby sevens isn’t so much Fiji’s main sport as their only sport: in an Olympic history stretching back to 1956, they have won three medals, all of which have come in this sport.
It wasn’t just the French players who had to deal with Dupont’s pulling power.
“Running out you just realise ‘it’s a full bloody house’”, admitted Ireland’s Jordan Conroy after the opening win over South Africa. “It’s a massive stadium and there’s a huge aura about it, so you take that in for a minute and then lock in.”
Ireland’s opening game against South Africa, which went to prove that even the sevens game can be Springbokified. Where all the preceding games were elastic, this game was knotty and taut. Ireland genuinely had 100% possession in the opening seven minutes but South Africa’s thrusting, aggressive defence was admirable, though it strayed across the threshold when Ryan Oosthuizen was sin-binned for colliding with Gavin Mullin’s head when trying to tackle. “F**k me, that was high”, wailed an Irish player before the TMO handed down his judgement.
Terry Kennedy then quickly sealed the game for Ireland with a delightful skip and snipe down the shortside, which rendered South Africa’s late try the stuff of scoreboard gloss. Across the entire day’s play, no side scored as few points as South Africa did here, although no winning side and only one other losing side – Kenya, in a 21-7 loss to Australia – scored as few as Ireland’s 10 points, either.
Ireland racked up six tries and 40 points in front of the thinning crowd against Japan, with Dupont’s exit from the pitch loosening a flow of fans toward the exits. Those same French fans will return here tomorrow, albeit in hope after today’s perishing expectations.
