England: Tommy Freeman’s bold Antoine Dupont claim ahead of Le Crunch

David Skippers
Tommy Freeman and Antoine Dupont image

England wing Tommy Freeman and France captain and scrum-half Antoine Dupont.

England flyer Tommy Freeman is adamant the Red Rose will be able to contain France’s captain and star scrum-half Antoine Dupont when the sides meet at Twickenham on Saturday.

Dupont returned to Six Nations action – after missing last year’s Championship to focus on the Olympic Games in Paris where he on a gold medal with France’s sevens team – and showed his class with an excellent all-round performance as Les Bleus kicked off their campaign with an impressive 43-0 win over Wales.

As usual, Dupont was pulling the strings on attack for Les Bleus in their Six Nations opener before leaving the Stade de France pitch to a standing ovation after 50 minutes.

England have been working on a method to minimise Dupont’s attacking brilliance and Freeman, who scored one of England’s tries in a narrow 27-22 defeat to Ireland in Round One, feels the jewel in France’s crown is not unstoppable.

‘He’s like everyone else’

“You can’t underestimate how good a player he is, but he’s human. He’s like everyone else: you take his legs and he goes down,” said the Northampton Saints wing.

“It’s all about picking things up nice and early with him and putting him under pressure.

“I’m sure like any other player, when you put pressure on them they start to leak a few opportunities.”

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England’s reversal to Ireland was a record-equalling seventh successive defeat against tier one opposition for the Red Rose and another loss would set a new low in the country’s 154-year rugby history.

Although France will head into this weekend’s encounter as clear favourites, Freeman is confident England can cause an upset on their home turf.

‘At the end of the day everyone is human’

“Of course we can. At the end of the day everyone is human, it’s rugby,” said Freeman.

“They’ll have a gameplan, we’ll have a gameplan and we’ll back ours to the moon and back. They’ll do the same to theirs. We’ll give ours as best a shot as we can.

“Obviously we wanted to come away with a result against Ireland. We felt like our first half was unbelievable. We came out firing and left it all out there.

“There was probably an element in the second half where we lapsed in concentration and a few things didn’t go our way.

“We’re disappointed with that, but the promise we’ve got in this squad means it’s going to tick and it’s going to change. Hopefully we’ll get on the right side of the results.”

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