Dupont is a fine, fine player. Of course he is. But let’s not get carried away with how significant sevens actually is or exaggerate just how difficult it is to transition from XVs to the abbreviated code. The biggest impediment is one of time. Simple as that. You can’t really play both. You need a modified form of conditioning and you need to get used to your team-mates and them to you.
Most of the back-line players listed above – the Edwards and the Carters – would be able to cope, Gareth, in particular, for he had a remarkably similar skill-set to Dupont: a low-slung centre of gravity, prodigious thrust through the hips, innate athletic prowess but, above all else, they are able to read the play. They know what is going to happen before other mere mortals and they know how to make it happen. That could have been Edwards himself in a Wales shirt seeing the gap as Dupont did early in the second-half against Fiji and scooting down the blindside to tee up a try. The Frenchman’s subsequent two tries had little to do with specialist sevens knowledge and everything to do with strength, grit and sporting savvy.
Seeing Dupont thrive and the Stade de France rise was a precious experience. He deserved the acclaim and the Parisians deserved a ray of sunshine on a soggy weekend. But let’s hold fire on GOAT accolades. Let’s be cautious too of trying to shoehorn more sevens into the calendar. World Rugby have enough trouble sorting the regular XVs schedule. They’ve only taken the best part of 30 years since professionalism arrived and it’s still something of a Horlicks.
So, let’s just enjoy the Olympic moment for what it was – a bit of theatre. Dupont’s play was the thing of the night. But those revels should now be ended.
Source link : https://www.telegraph.co.uk/olympics/2024/07/30/antoine-dupont-greatest-player-all-time-goat-rugby-sevens/
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Publish date : 2024-07-30 06:17:00
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