Arthur Schopenhauer was a 19th-century Germain philosopher born in 1788, 35 years before a naughty boy named Billy Ellis picked up the ball during a game of soccer and sprinted away into rugby mythology.
While Schopenhauer was obsessed with topics such as metaphysics, morality and eternal justice – how to create an overlap on the blindside of a ruck was not high on his topics of interest.
So when he wrote, “Talent hits a target no one else can hit. Genius hits a target no one else can see”, the name of Antoine Dupont was not in his reckoning.
Last Sunday at the Stadio Olimpico in Rome, Dupont personified Schopenhauer’s description of genius as he created multiple opportunities that no other player on the planet is capable of seeing.
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In another of a long and ever-growing list of stunning performances, which include winning an Olympic gold medal at Sevens, Dupont ripped Italy apart as he displayed an unimaginable variety of skills of such an exceptionally high standard that he appeared capable of doing everything in a rugby match apart from cutting up the half-time oranges and driving the team bus.
The zenith of Dupont’s performance was in the multiple phases leading up to Paul Boudehent’s try in the 30th minute. Dupont was the French hammer, driving his hard-working forward pack as the nail, repeatedly pounding the Italians at the same point, close to the ruck.
The French captain defied common logic and ran into the teeth of the Italian forwards, where regular scrumhalves would be swamped by the giants. Remarkably, Dupont was able to either offload or, with extraordinary footwork, force the Italians to make a low tackle to create a quick placement. Like a pack of wild dogs on the Serengeti, the French forwards reacted to what their leader was demanding of them as they continued in a co-ordinated hammering of the Italians down route one.
The crescendo of an astonishing 45-metre drive through the heart of the Italian defence came when Dupont saw Italian centre Tommaso Menoncello step less than a metre out of the defensive alignment. Dupont’s genius was about to hit a target no one else could see.
He accelerated from the base of the ruck into that tiny gap, drawing in the outside Italian defenders as Boudehent simply ran into the hole created by Dupont’s magnetism and crashed over holding on to the short pass from his ring master.
Images from the French dressingroom before the match caught a shirtless Dupont as he changed his warm-up gear for his matchday jersey. The athleticism of his physique was astonishing. Reports are that Dupont is bench pressing in the 150kg range. A phenomenal lift for an 88kg scrumhalf.
Speed multiplied by strength equals power, and possessing exceptional acceleration allows Dupont to create the power to punch through defenders' tackles to offload to support players seemingly at will. With this pace, he is a peerless support player, which is how he scored two tries against Italy from receiving inside passes on either side of the field from both of his wingers.
In Rome, Dupont was simply breathtaking.
He is the greatest scrumhalf I have witnessed. He sits alongside Mark Ella as another genius player I have seen who can create space to attack, seemingly out of nothing.
Yet, however great Dupont is, and his greatness is unquestionable, none of us should ever use the term “the greatest of all time”, simply because none of us have seen them all.
What we can say is that, like Ella and a few rare others, Dupont is a true great of his time.
On YouTube there is a rugby clip entitled The Magnificent Seven’. It is the story surrounding the legendary Welsh scrumhalf Gareth Edwards, who without question was also a genius, and the six other players who touched the ball while scoring one of rugby’s greatest ever tries for the Barbarians against New Zealand in 1973.
That exceptional try is introduced by the majestically descriptive voice of a great Irish winger, the late Tony O’Reilly. He opens the clip by telling us, “And in that try of 1973, that famous often recalled try for the Barbarians, against the grim-faced Stakhanovites from New Zealand, you saw rugby in all its technical excellence and all its simple, unashamed brilliance.”
The Stakhanovites were a fanatical workers' movement inside the Soviet Union coal mines who filled more train carriages with coal than their daily quotas demanded. These quotas were set by their Soviet masters, yet they toiled underground to fill extra coal trains without extra pay, in support of the brutality of the Soviet Union’s goals.
At that time, rugby’s “grim-faced Stakhanovites” were the Kiwis who were fanatically dedicated to playing a brutal forwards-based brand of rugby. The Barbarians, and Edwards in particular, were “the light on the hill”. They held the hope that the game could be an enchanting process, played with “all its simple, unashamed brilliance”.
Like the genius of Edwards, Dupont’s technical brilliance empowers him to produce such extraordinary rugby that, once again, it dares us to believe that our game can be played in a joyous manner that inspires, rather than selecting 14 forwards in your 23 to brutalise your way to victory.
Athletes such as Don Bradman in cricket, Wayne Gretzky in ice hockey, Tom Brady in the NFL, Michael Jordan in the NBA, and Ella and Edwards are not once-in-a-generation talents, they are once-in-a-century creators. All have hit targets no one else can see.
We are all fortunate to be watching rugby in a period where another of these exceptionally rare individuals is plying his craft.
If you can, go to watch Dupont play. Take your children and your parents.
Take with you a spirit of gratitude and simply try to breathe in the enormity of his skill, courage and genius.
And when that genius creates something that only he could possibly see, soak in the pleasure of being privileged to witness a true great express his extraordinary abilities.
Next weekend at the Aviva there will be no “grim-faced Stakhanovites” digging rugby coal out of the game’s darkest mines. In the maelstrom of excitement and competition between two excellent teams striving for the Six Nations championship, there will be only one true genius on display.
Watch him and wallow in his greatness. In victory or defeat enjoy Dupont’s play, because none of us may ever see his likes again.
