a sense of déjà vu. Seventeen
years earlier I had sat before three
of the most precocious talents in the
French game at the time and listened
to their statements of intent. But
Frédéric Michalak, Clément Poitrenaud
and Nicolas Jeanjean arguably never
fulfilled that early potential, and only
time will tell how rugby will remember
Dupont, Ramos and Ntamack.
Dupont, as befits a scrum-half, is the
character of the three friends. Asked
under the glorious Toulouse sun if he
one day might sign for an English club,
he shoots back with a grin: “If global
warming continues, why not?”
Ntamack is the city slicker, a stylish,
softly-spoken young man who escapes
the pressures of international sport by
meeting his non-rugby playing friends
for a coffee on the terrace of one of
Toulouse’s myriad cafés.
Full-back Ramos is the only one of the
three who lives outside the city; he’s
a country lad at heart and his idea of
relaxation is building his own house.
There’s been plenty of rebuilding
work in Toulouse in recent years, a
new empire arising from the ruins of the
Ancien Régime administered by Guy
Novès. Like Arsène Wenger at Arsenal,
Novès outstayed his welcome as head
Francecoach by several seasons and when he
did finally depart after 22 years in 2015
for his ill-fated stint to take charge of
France, he left behind a club in decay.
It’s only this season that his successor,
Ugo Mola, has seen the results of his
extensive redevelopment.
“We’ve been developing a style
of rugby in recent years that is now
bearing fruit,” explains Dupont, who
arrived from Castres. “We’ve also
recruited intelligently, signing playerswho fit easily into the style we’re trying
to achieve. In the back-line we’re all
attack-minded. We want to get our
hands on the ball and we will
counter-attack whenever we can.”
Dupont is one such intelligent signing,
arriving in the summer of 2017, along
with another astute acquisition, the
Springbok winger Cheslin Kolbe.
“I’d never heard about Antoine when
I arrived at Toulouse,” explains Kolbe. “It
was crazy when I learnt how young heToulouse trio
All three played in
the Top 14 final winTable talk
Sharing their views with
RW’s Gavin Mortimer