In Marcoussis
Toulouse residents Thomas Ramos and François Cros answered questions from the press this Tuesday evening in Marcoussis. They were, among other things, questioned about the debate around the absence of Antoine Dupont, who gave up the Six Nations Tournament to go in search of Olympic gold with the French rugby sevens team.
“That’s your job,” replied the Blues back, smiling. We don’t talk about it at all between us, players, or with the staff. We didn’t come back from the match saying ‘we’re missing Antoine, we’re missing Antoine’…” Before adding: “We’ve been together for three weeks with this group and we intend to perform well with this group there. The rest doesn’t belong to us. Decisions were made well before this Tournament. We’ve known for months that it was going to happen like this. Today, we’re not going to be surprised…”
François Cros, for his part, came to the support of Maxime Lucu, who replaced Antoine Dupont, criticized for his performance during the inaugural debacle against Ireland. “Even if we had had Antoine with us, given our level in the rucks and the poor quality of our ball exits, it would have been complicated for him too. We really didn’t make Max comfortable, he didn’t have a clean ball, an easy ball release. From there, it’s complicated to express yourself,” pleaded the third-row wing.
Before getting things straightened out. “There is no comparison to be made between Antoine and Maxime. It was us, up front, who put him in difficulty. It’s up to us to do things well against Scotland so that he can play in an armchair and express all his talent.
