6N: France v Scotland: Gregor Townsend urges his team to play to their strengths in Paris
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FRANCE will be with Antoine Dupont when they take on Scotland in the final round of the 2025 Six Nations in Paris next weekend, due to a serious knee injury suffered against Ireland yesterday [Saturday] afternoon – but given that they were only 5-0 ahead when they lost their talismanic scrum-half with less than half an hour played in Dublin then charged into an astonishing 42-13 lead before two late Irish tries salvaged some respectability on the scoreboard for the hosts, it seems unlikely that an enforced switch at No 9 will decisively handicap Les Bleus.
Certainly, Scotland head coach Gregor Townsend was not pinning too much on Dupont’s availability or otherwise when he spoke to the press on Saturday evening, whilst also insisting that his charges have got what it takes to rain on France’s Six Nations coronation parade.
"Maxime Lucu [Dupont’s replacement against Ireland] is part of a very good Bordeaux team,” said Townsend. "They put almost 70 points on Exeter [Bordeaux won 69-17 away in Champions Cup in January], and he was outstanding that day. So they’ve got other nines as well who are quality. And the depth of French rugby, right throughout their team, their backline, their squad, if they go seven-one [between forwards and back on the bench], you know you’re going to come up against some top, top players.
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“I watched a lot of [the Ireland v France game],” he continued. “I watched the first half before we got on the team bus to go to our own game. Ireland had a lot of play in the first 20 minutes, but they weren’t able to break France down, couldn’t score. And that’s unlike Ireland, they’re really good in the opposition 22.
"And any errors they made, they were punished by France, and France then grew in confidence. When they click, whether it’s the forwards interlinking or some of their magical backline players, they’re very, very dangerous.
"And at home [next week] they’ll be full of that energy and passion that they always show when they play at the Stade de France."
"You’ve got to make sure that you play to your strengths [when you take on France in Paris]. Even two years ago, when we were a man down and then they got a re- card, it was a very open game [which France won 32-21]. I don’t think they wanted it to be as open at times and we had chances. We got within seven points at one stage. And then two years before that, we just kept on playing [to win the match 23-27, which deprived France of the Six Nations title].
"We’ve got to make sure we’re accurate, I think that’s the most important thing. The ball that we have, that we make the best use of it.
"And then being as strong defensively as possible. They will play a different game. It’s a game that attacks you around the ruck, which is a big way of how Toulouse play.
"One reason they’re picking these seven forwards on the bench is to bring them on and play that game, like Emmanuel Meafou carrying ball close to the ruck. So it’ll be a big test for our defence, a different test for our defence than we had on Saturday and a real test for our forward pack. But what an opportunity for our forward pack as well.”
Townsend bit back when asked about press reports last week identifying the Scotland coach as a vocal critic of the seven-one/bomb-squad bench option which was popularised by South Africa and has since been adopted by France (who employed the strategy against Ireland this weekend_ – but admitted that it is a feature of modern rugby he is not fully supportive of.
"They got their facts wrong,” said Townsend of the reports which originally appeared in The Telegraph newspaper on Thursday. "There was a private discussion [at a recent World Rugby ‘Shape of the Game’ conference] where I was the spokesman for my table and that was one of the things that was brought up, to get headlines, [because] I’m the one that’s bringing it up.
"Anyway, if you want my view, I don’t think the bench was set up to suddenly have a new forward pack coming on. But that’s for World Rugby to decide what you do with the bench, and to make any changes
"But just now you can put eight forwards on the bench if you want. We’ve faced it already with South Africa. We thought we rose to that challenge really well when they brought their seven forwards on and our forwards matched them. If it happens again this week, we’ve got to do even better."
Despite his own opposition to the strategy, Townsend refused to rule out the possibility that he would go for a seven-one bench split himself if he felt doing so would be to his own team’s advantage.
"Who knows? All options are on the table. We do have players that can play in different positions. France have that, but so do we. Guys like Blair Kinghorn and Tom Jordan have played 10 at international rugby and obviously Tom’s played 15 and 12. So who knows? We’ll see.
“First of all, we have to review our game and get our selection right in terms of the 23 that we believe can win us a game.
"Where do we think the game might end up? Is it going to be more a game where we need forwards in a 6-2 or 7-1? Or is it a game where we need backs because it’s going to be so open that we’ve got to make sure we’re bringing backs off the bench?"
Townsend added that he is confident that his decision to replace captain Finn Russell with 20 minutes still to play when the stand-off started to cramp, and to bring off tight-head prop Zander Fagerson at that point as well, was the right call in terms of making absolutely sure that his two most important players are fighting fit to face France next weekend, even if it contributed to a lacklustre end to the Wales game.
"When Finn was cramping up, he could have probably gone for another 10-15 minutes. But who knows? Sometimes those are risky situations. A cramp can become a calf tear,” he said.
"And we back our bench. It was hard for the bench to get into the game because there were a couple of times we lost ball and were defending. For the guys who started the game, we had a lot of ball in that first half and they really got into the game.
"I felt the last 5-10 minutes, the bench did come on really well. I thought George Horne was excellent at playing at tempo, Gregor Brown was getting on ball, Ewan Ashman scored a try [which was not awarded], Rory Sutherland obviously got held up on a couple of occasions. So, you saw the impact that we probably were expecting earlier but it came in that last 10 minutes.
"Hopefully with the likes of Finn and Zander, they’re going to be recovered in time for training this week and in time for a massive game at the weekend."
"Recovery is a key focus for us. I don’t think there’s much we have to add to our game. It’s our fifth game.
“Normally we do a little bit on Monday but not much. We won’t do anything on Monday and then Tuesday will be light. We’ll have a good training session on Wednesday but instead of having two big days, it will be diluted into one day and then we’re flying on Thursday.
"The way the players are attacking shows that we don’t have to tweak too much. We will have to defend differently this week because France don’t go wide like Wales go wide. We might have to do a bit of learning off the field to make sure we know what’s coming but we will have Wednesday to put that in place."
6N: France v Scotland: Antoine Dupont confirms ruptured cruciate ligament
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