PARIS: Five months after his last appearance at the Stade Ernest Wallon, Antoine Dupont was back, a 10-minute hat-trick reminding the Toulouse faithful that he remains the king of French rugby. They cheered noisily when his name was announced among the replacements for Saturday’s sixth round Top 14 match against Clermont and even louder when he peeled off his training top to come on for Japanese scrum-half Naoto Saito in the 45th minute.

The noise levels went through the roof two minutes later when the France captain and Olympic Sevens gold medal winner darted through a hole in the Clermont defence to chalk up his first try of the night. “He doesn’t need 50 chances, he’s an opportunist,” said Toulouse’s skills coach David Mele.

Seven minutes later Dupont was on hand for an inside pass from Ange Capuozzo to scurry over the line for his second and two minutes after that he grabbed his third, chasing down and scooping up the ball after the Italian’s kick into the Clermont 22.

“He came on and scored a hat-trick in 10 minutes,” said Toulouse teammate Anthony Jelonch at the end of a runaway 48-14 win. “It’s something only he can do.” Always modest, Dupont played down the quality of the hat-trick. “I always try to be in the right place at the right time,” he told Canal Plus after the game.

“Sometimes it works out better than others. These weren’t the most difficult tries of my career but it’s five points each time.” Toulouse, last season’s Top 14 and Champions Cup winners, went into the Clermont game on the back of two defeats.

Any hint of concern about the way the team was playing evaporated on a difficult night for Clermont whose fans did their best to lure the scrum-half to the Auvergne: “Antoine Dupont to Clermont, come and wake up the volcanoes,” read one banner. Talent is obviously key with Dupont, he is an immensely gifted rugby player, already of the greats, but there is more to his aura than that, notably his love for the game and desire to play and set new goals.

‘Enthusiasm’

After suffering the massive disappointment of losing to South Africa by a single point in the World Cup quarter-final last year, Dupont chose to miss the Six Nations in order to try and get into the France Sevens team for the Paris Olympics.

His modesty never allowed him to consider himself an automatic pick. History shows that he not only got into the team but was arguably the determining factor in their glorious gold medal success at the Stade de France.

A belated holiday, which saw him rubbing shoulders with Lionel Messi and LeBron James in the US, accounted for his late arrival to the Top 14 season but the break appears to have worked wonders. “I made the most of the holidays but every time I came back to training it made me want to be out on the pitch with my mates at the weekend,” he said.

“I knew I had a good period to recover and then I could get back into it fully, so I came to training with a lot of enthusiasm. “It’s great to be back in a game like this with a lot of desire and a lot of movement. “I’ve known the guys in this dressing room for years so everything clicked back into gear right away. And even though I wasn’t here for several months, it feels like yesterday.” That can only be good news for Toulouse. — AFP