France hoping Antoine Dupont at outhalf can help change fortunes against South Africa

Nations Championship: France v South Africa, Stade de France, Friday, 8.10pm – Live on Virgin Media and UTV

The final of this inaugural Nations Championship is two weeks away, but regardless of who makes it through to the last match at Twickenham there’s an irresistible sense that the two best teams from either side of the competition will go head-to-head at the Stade de France this Friday night.

France, back-to-back Six Nations champions, play South Africa, back-to-back world champions, and the one team that the French – and anyone else with dreams of becoming the world’s best team – need to find a way to beat in the 12 months before the Springboks take a run at winning a third consecutive World Cup.

France have been looking for one of those for a long time now. This is not an even-sided rivalry. South Africa have won nine of the 10 games the two teams have played in the last 15 years, including the last five in Paris.

England, Ireland, even Wales all have better head-to-head records against the Springboks in that same stretch of time. France’s one win was in Marseille in 2022, and whatever good it did them was undone a year later when the Springboks knocked them out of their home World Cup in the quarter-finals.

“We tend to get up for the French team, out of respect,” said Rassie Erasmus this week. “It doesn’t take a lot to get the team up. We’ve spoken about it. We enjoy the way the French people get behind their team, this cauldron [Stade de France], it’s not something a lot of our players have experienced so when they get the opportunity they want to put their best foot forward, to represent themselves, their families and their country.”

Erasmus didn’t want to talk about whether his side were favourites or not, after all, he said, what difference does it make? “The only bad thing about being favourites is you might get complacent. And we are definitely not complacent.”

That World Cup quarter-final finished 29-28. The French got so close, but because it was hard to imagine they could play any better they somehow ended up feeling further away than ever. They were still talking about the impact of that defeat two years later, when the Springboks came back to the ground and beat them 32-17 despite playing half the game with 14 men.

“What can I say about this South African team?” said Erasmus’s opposite number Fabien Galthié on Wednesday. “Today they are among the best teams to have ever existed in world rugby.”

Galthié has never yet sent out a French team without hope that they can, in his words, do something “improbable”, but that self-belief feels pretty thin this week. They are in the midst of an injury crisis that has left them with existential questions about the toll the domestic game takes on their players.

Galthié has used more than 100 players since June 2024. Right now, 30 of them are out injured. Between them the missing players combine for 34 per cent of all France’s total playing time in that period, and 41 per cent of the points they’ve scored during it. They’ve lost hookers, props, locks, flankers, centres and fullbacks, but the problem is sharpest at outhalf.

They are missing both Matthieu Jalibert and Romain Ntamack, as well as their regular understudies Thomas Ramos and Antoine Hastoy. In the circumstances, Galthié has decided to gamble on picking Antoine Dupont at outhalf, with Maxime Lucu inside him at scrumhalf.

With no good outhalf to pick, the French have gone for two great scrumhalves instead. Dupont has done it before, but it has been a while. He played eight games there for Toulouse during an injury crisis in 2024. Lucu has more recent experience in the position, and filled in there last week after Ntamack went off injured during the Test against Fiji.

“It’s been a huge challenge to overcome, but we’ve really enjoyed trying to design a solution,” Galthié said. “They are two icons in France, one at Bordeaux and the other at Toulouse, and we wanted to bring them together to lead this French team on Friday night. It won’t be easy, but we think it’s the best solution.”

There’s an idea that the two of them are going to swap back and forth during the match. If nothing else, it’s given them the satisfaction of proving Erasmus wrong: he had predicted they would move one of the centres to play No 10 instead.

Erasmus was keen to point out that South Africa have their own injuries to worry about – Frans Malherbe, RG Snyman, Kwagga Smith, André Esterhuizen, Handré Pollard and Cheslin Kolbe are all missing. But he has still been able to put together a team where the eight forwards have almost as many caps between them as the entire French XV.

Galthié has recalled a couple of old hands – Julien Marchand at hooker and Grégory Alldritt at number eight – but otherwise his team feels green. They have just 611 caps between them, and seven of them have fewer than five caps each. Galthié puts the blame for these injuries on the domestic set-up, saying the French system makes the players old before their time. But he is hoping that the Top 14 will provide the solution, too. It is a team picked on league form. There have been other changes, too, which have brought the national side a little closer to the domestic game.

The French released both the foreign coaches in their set-up, Shaun Edwards and Vlok Cilliers, and have replaced them with men who work in the Top 14. Galthié has brought in Maxime Petitjean from Toulon to work on the team’s kicking strategy and Geoffrey Doumayrou from Montpellier to run the defence. It’s an interesting pick. Doumayrou is only 37, and was playing for the national team as recently as 2019. He moved straight into coaching at Montpellier and within two seasons had turned them into the tightest defence in the league.

Something had to change. France have spent years trying to find a way to beat the Springboks. They’re about to find out if any of it has brought them any closer to actually doing it. – Guardian

FRANCE: Theo Attissogbe; Aaron Grandidier-Nkanang, Kalvin ​Gourgues, Yoram Moefana, Louis Bielle-Biarrey; Antoine Dupont (capt), Maxime Lucu; Jean-Baptiste Gros, Julien Marchand, Sipili Falatea; Florian Verhaeghe, Mickael Guillard; Francois ​Cros, Cameron Woki, Gregory Alldritt.

Replacements: Peato Mauvaka, Rodrigue Neti, Regis Montagne, Charles Ollivon, Tom Staniforth, Esteban Capilla, Axel Desperes, Emilien Gailleton.

SOUTH AFRICA: Damian Willemse; Kurt-Lee Arendse, Jesse Kriel, Damian de Allende, Ethan Hooker; Sacha Feinberg-Mngomezulu, Morne van den Berg; Ox Nche, Malcolm Marx, Wilco Louw; Lood de Jager, Ruan Nortje; Siya Kolisi (capt), Pieter-Steph ‌du Toit, Jasper Wiese.

Replacements: Jan-Hendrik Wessels, Gerhard Steenekamp, Thomas du ​Toit, Franco Mostert, Cameron Hanekom, Paul de Villiers, Cobus Reinach, Manie Libbok.

Referee: Andrea Piardi (Ita).