Do you feel impatient or apprehensive when it comes to getting back on the pitch? Antoine Dupont: As in every off-season, we are always looking forward to the first moments on the pitch, the first moments… To finally have a match live ammunition. It’s been a few months since the Six Nations Tournament with the French team… There’s a lot of excitement and desire on the part of the whole group. Apprehension? No more than usual. We know the risks every time we enter the field. But I would say that there is more desire, motivation. We’ve been training for long weeks, we want to test ourselves on the meadow.
This match is a real test to gauge your game? Of course. We started during the first weeks with a very strong emphasis on physical preparation. Rugby was a bit secondary. There, we enter the heart of the matter for fifteen days. It will be the first warm-up game for a lot of us. We can test ourselves, see what worked, what didn’t work in the last game and learn by trying to improve it.
Scotland are the only team to have beaten you three times since the arrival of Fabien Galthié. Do you have an explanation? It was different encounters with different contexts. I’m thinking in particular of the first Tournament (28-17 defeat in 2020, editor’s note) where we lost there probably for lack of experience. We win there behind but, then, we lose the Tournament (27-23 in 2021, editor’s note) on the last action during a match where we have to score a lot of points, tries, a bonus… scotland, we don’t talk about it much, but it’s a great team. They have a complicated chicken but it will be a real contender to reach the final stages. They have been playing ambitious rugby for several seasons but they also know how to be pragmatic and win matches. It’s a very good team…
Statements taken at a press conference
