SPOTLIGHT: France and Toulouse scrumhalf Antoine Dupont admitted that he found the humid Durban conditions tough following his side’s 20-8 Champions Cup victory over the Sharks at Kings Park.
It was built-up as the Champions Cup clash of the weekend – with former World Player of the Year Antoine Dupont making his return to South Africa for the first time since 2017.
In contrast, it was a clash littered with errors from both sides as ball handling appeared to be a problem due to the humid Durban conditions.
Dupont felt that his side could’ve done better and is disappointed to not have scored four tries for a bonus-point.
“We’re satisfied, but regarding the first-half, we could’ve done better and scored more points as well as tries to get the bonus-point.
“Now we have to focus on ourselves heading into the next pool clash against Leicester to be as best as we can be.”
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The 28-year-old admitted that he found the humid conditions tough to play in and that it was a different experience for himself and his side.
“Really, really tough honestly, after five minutes I was watching the clock,” Dupont told @rugby365com when asked how he experienced the conditions.
He added: “I was thinking it would be very long, but it was the same for both teams.
“We’re not used to these kind of conditions in France, so we tried to prepare the best as we could last week.
“We tried to come [to Durban] earlier in the week, but when you’ve got to play a match it’s not the same thing.
“It was a real tough game.”
He admitted that his side has a lot of work-on’s before their final pool clash against Leicester Tigers if they were to reach their goals as a group.
“We made a lot of mistakes.
“Knock-on’s, lineouts and contesting the breakdown.
“We have some work to analyse this game and be better next week.
“For now we’ll recover first and travel back to France.
“We’ll have to be better next week if we’ll want to reach our objectives.”
Image credit @EPCR
