How to stop Antoine Dupont: JOE MARLER, SIR CLIVE WOODWARD and DAN BIGGAR’s definitive guide to England’s Mission Impossible – using NFL tactics, shutting down his sidekick …and laxatives!

It would be more fitting if Antoine Dupont’s matchday kit included a mask and cape – or even a crown. Rugby’s superhero and Gallic king will grace Twickenham with his presence today, leaving England fans deeply conflicted, writes CHRIS FOY.

Most spectators in the capacity crowd for Le Crunch will crave a Six Nations upset; an against-the-odds home win. But they will also pour into the stadium full of anticipation about the prospect of seeing an oval-ball icon at the peak of his powers. 

If Dupont isn’t already the GOAT (greatest of all time), then he is surely on course to be. What he is, without question, is a generational talent and legend.

This remarkable Frenchman is single-handedly capable of undermining centuries of cross-Channel antipathy, by attracting the warmth and admiration of an English audience, in defiance of their national allegiance.

It isn’t even grudging – he attracts genuine awe and wonder, which cuts across the boundaries of entrenched rivalries. Fans wearing the red rose in south-west London today will be glad to witness a genius in action, even if he does untold harm to their team.

Dupont is already established in the rugby pantheon and he is now also operating in the sporting stratosphere, as one of the greatest ball-playing showmen on earth. 

When he took a holiday trip to the USA last year, the Toulouse scrum-half met up with Lionel Messi and LeBron James, and the sight of the sorcerers together was a fitting reflection of his exalted status. He transcends his own game in a way few others do. 

While the 28-year-old does not yet have a stellar CV on the same level of a Richie McCaw or Dan Carter, he is adding eye-catching entries at a remarkable rate.

Last year, there was an epic personal Treble, as he won the Champions Cup and Top 14 league with his club, then switched into Sevens mode and inspired France’s surge to golden glory in front of their euphoric public in Paris.

It is impossible to exaggerate his standing among the French people. Dupont is lord and master of all he surveys.

In a country where rugby eclipses football in terms of nationwide popularity, the No 9 is the box-office star; the poster boy and darling. He was the face of the Olympics.

They worship him and the adulation has spread. When he comes to English grounds with Toulouse, the home fans flock to this piped piper figure. Security has to be stepped up.

People recognise greatness and they crave a glimpse. Those backing England this evening will arrive at the game knowing that even if it all ends in tears for the national team, they can tell their children and grandchildren that they watched Dupont in his prime. He is becoming that figure; that Messi or Sachin Tendulkar or Michael Jordan. Enjoy him while you can.

As for stopping him; impossible. Dupont doesn’t have bad games. He has two settings; very, very good or utterly brilliant. He could probably play in a mask and cape, or even in a crown, and still make a mockery of the opposition defence. The man has no weakness.

All England can try to do is destroy his platform, by overwhelming France’s pack, but that itself is a near-impossible task.

Earlier this week, in these pages, there was a call to block the Channel or deny Dupont entry at passport control, but it’s too late, he is in the country and soon he will be in the building.

So, frankly, just savour it. Pray for the home side, by all means, but all who watch today’s game should be willing witnesses as rugby’s regal superhero continues his march towards immortality.

Here, Mail Sport’s esteemed columnists have all sought to identify flickers of English hope and ways to combat the maestro No 9. Forgive them if that sound you can hear is the clutching of straws.

JOE MARLER

Former England prop, 95 caps 

In my eyes, Antoine Dupont is the greatest player I’ve ever seen.

Now, my rugby eyes only go back to 2003, if you can have such a thing as rugby eyes. It also feels slightly like I’m just jumping on a bandwagon everyone else is already rolling along on, because we were all talking about Dupont even before he did what he did in 48 ridiculous minutes against Wales last week.

But it’s true. I genuinely believe it, and I genuinely believe it because his all-round game is ridiculous. He’s the best scrum-half. He’s also one of the best tacklers, one of the best jackallers, one of the best carriers, one of the best runners, one of the best kickers. He can literally do everything.

Except one thing. The last thing he needs to add to his game, if he truly wants to be considered the GOAT, is that he has to learn to scrummage. If he can show me that he can play front row at international level, he is the greatest of all time. He will have completed rugby.

But here’s the thing. Dupont is so good he actually could. He would make a brilliant hooker. He’s bigger than Brian Moore. This would also allow him to throw in at the lineout, so there literally wouldn’t be a single aspect of the game he wasn’t involved in.

So this is what I want to see, before the Six Nations is out: a special play cooked up by France, where Dupont slots in at loosehead, and Cyril Baille is at scrum-half feeding the ball in.

Imagine what that would do to the heads of the opposition. Imagine that would do to the bite-sized social media meme industry. Things would genuinely explode.

The really annoying thing about Dupont, bearing in mind everything he touches turns to gold, is that he’s not an idiot about it. He has supreme confidence, bordering on arrogance, but because he’s French, it comes out as a sexy smokiness instead.

He’s blessed in that he’s a lovely human being to look at with your eyes, whether these are rugby eyes or standard human ones. He loves authentic off-field engagement, whether that’s his fashion interests or interacting with the fans.

He’s also getting better. I know what you’re thinking: this is insane. But look at the way he was playing against Wales, running across the field with ball in hand, sometimes even going backwards.

This is supposed to be a cardinal sin for a nine. It’s either go straight or spin your pass out. Don’t mess around with it. Don’t dawdle into your team-mates’ space.

But this is a the genius of the man. Not content with switching to sevens last year, and then winning Olympic gold for his home nation in their capital city and scoring the first try in the final against the team who had won the previous two Olympics, he has now taken an aspect of sevens play and brought it into the 15-a-side game.

Because he wasn’t going sideways or backwards. He was doing exactly what Fiji do in sevens – going fishing. Going deep to create space. Wandering around to draw out the defence. Dangling his rod until he got a bite, and then – bang – striking at crazy pace.

You could argue his pass for the second try against Wales was massively forward. This is just another way to measure his greatness. He’s reached the Richie McCaw standard: so good even the referees will let him do exactly what he wants to do, whether it’s legal or not.

How do you stop him? It’s hard, because ordinarily you’d try to take away his time. But the pack in front of him is so lumpy and massive he always gets an armchair ride.

You can no more starve him of the ball than you can sit me in front of a family pack of Valencia ice lollies and expect there to be some left half an hour later.

There’s only one thing for it: infiltrate the team hotel the night before, pay off the head chef, and get some laxatives put in his food.

But here’s the thing: Antoine Dupont could probably outrun diarrhoea. That’s how insane he is. I’m not sure what else there is to say.

SIR CLIVE WOODWARD

England’s World Cup-winning coach

When I was in charge of England, I used to love the phrase ‘pressure with pressure’ and regularly employed it to the coaching of the team.

What that means is to recognise and acknowledge the biggest threat in the opposition ranks. But rather than just try to nullify it, actually attack it. It’s the opposite of what most teams do.

I have been asked on several occasions this week: ‘How would you stop Antoine Dupont?’ In past matches against New Zealand, England’s biggest nemesis was the great Jonah Lomu. We all knew what his strengths were as a barnstorming ball-carrier on the wing.

But our pressure with pressure mantra meant that in those games, we’d look to put the most heat on Lomu of any of the All Blacks players. What we would do was try to nullify his threats by turning him with kicks in behind, because he wasn’t great at dealing with those.

Pressure with pressure is what England need to utilise when they take on France on Saturday and have to try and keep a lid on the brilliant Dupont. If England can stop Dupont, they can stop France.

When a team’s talisman is also their scrum-half or fly-half, the stakes are even higher. That’s because as the playmakers, they can inflict the most damage on you. The flipside to that is if you can break them, the whole team will follow.

Dupont is the one French player who can put England under the most pressure. So, he has to be the target as the one for the English defence to put the most pressure upon.

The late, great South African scrum-half Joost van der Westhuizen is up there as one of the greatest talismen rugby has ever seen.

This week, I was shown footage from a team meeting ahead of England’s pivotal 2003 World Cup group game against Van der Westhuizen’s Springboks. In truth, he terrified me. We had written him off, but he was back to his best and was the one guy who could get South Africa going.

Van der Westhuizen’s name was written down on my pre-match presentation chart, and in the meeting, I said: ‘There’s been a lot of talk this week about this guy, Joost, but I think he is a real weakness. We want to be all over this guy. You’ve got to target him. He is their team and if we get him, we’ve got all of them.’

Other scrum-halves we would go out of our way to attack were the Australian great George Gregan and Fabien Galthie of France, now the head coach of Les Bleus. Like Dupont, Galthie was also a French No 9 and captain.

To be clear, this is not a case of trying to hurt anyone. But you must target players like Dupont and let them know they are playing against England. Matt Dawson and Kieran Bracken understood ‘pressure with pressure’ better than anyone.

Because Dupont is captain, you also must take this pressure game to the referee. Maro Itoje must not let this darling of world rugby win over the official.

That said, keeping Dupont quiet is not a one or two-man job. What I would be doing if I was in Steve Borthwick’s shoes as England head coach would be to set the team a target of how many times they can tackle Dupont – man and ball.

It’s the Super Bowl this weekend and in the NFL, they talk about sacking the quarterback (tackling him before he can throw the ball away). You can bet your bottom dollar the Philadelphia Eagles players will be discussing how they can sack Patrick Mahomes – the great quarterback of the Kansas City Chiefs.

If the quarterback gets sacked in the NFL, the crowd goes wild. If Tom Curry or Ben Earl get to Dupont at Twickenham, the place will erupt. It can give England a big lift.

I think Borthwick should tell his players there is a goal to sack Dupont three times across the course of the game. If they can hit that target, it will go a long way to them winning. It is also a realistic achievement.

I would also be using the media to build on this. I think the English rugby journalists can be a real partner to the national side. I’d be telling the press how good a player Dupont is, but this is the way we’re going to try to stop him.

Such pre-match rhetoric would create a brilliant atmosphere in the crowd (I’m sure it is going to be a great occasion anyway) and really enliven everything around the game.

That is not the sort of thing Borthwick likes to do. He is very calm and straight down the line. But it’s a case of not being too brash with your comments.

You are still only ever aiming to stop the player in a legal way. Ultimately, targeting a player is the ultimate mark of respect. In my pre-New Zealand press conferences, I was always asked about Lomu and I said exactly that. It was the same with Van der Westhuizen before South Africa matches.

Two decades or so later, not much has really changed as the same applies to Dupont today.

DAN BIGGAR

Former Wales and British & Irish Lions fly-half, 115 Test caps

I thought England assistant coach Richard Wigglesworth spoke really well this week about how to stop Antoine Dupont.

His answer was basically along the lines of ‘If people knew how to do it, then it would have happened by now.’ Dupont is unstoppable, an absolute freak!

I’ve played against him several times with Wales and Toulon. When I was part of Welsh sides against Dupont’s France, the truth is we wouldn’t even bother to analyse him!

He has everything. He’s stronger than most centres and quicker than most wings. He kicks off both feet. If you try and rush him, he’ll put his team-mates into space. If you give him time, you’re absolutely knackered because he makes breaks for fun!

England will have totally wasted their time this week if they’ve spent it worrying about Dupont because he’s that good. But what I would have been doing if I was in the England camp was working out how to target his half-back partner Matthieu Jalibert, who is starting at No 10 with Romain Ntamack suspended after his red card against Wales.

Dupont and Ntamack are team-mates with both Toulouse and France, so they know each other inside out. Ntamack is so good because he’s more than happy to let Dupont do his thing.

Ntamack is content to stay out of the game and let France’s forwards and Dupont go to work for multiple phases before he’ll come alive and look to play. That’s a bit unusual for a 10 because normally as a fly-half, you want the ball all the time.

Jalibert is like that. He’s Bordeaux’s main man. Unlike Ntamack, he wants lots of touches and to make passes. England need to put as much pressure on him as possible.

The key for them is to ensure Jalibert is forced into making bad decisions. To do that, line speed and physicality is key. The likes of Tom Curry and Ben Earl will have to hound the breakdown, forcing Dupont to find Jalibert. But the pressure can’t stop there. It has to then carry on from nine to 10.

Jalibert doesn’t start many games for France and he has a tetchy relationship with their head coach Fabien Galthie. So, he’ll be desperate to impress. England need to prey on that.

They also need to understand that Jalibert is no park player. He is a supreme talent. Putting huge pressure on him is also a risk because clearly, he will get the ball away at times and unleash France’s strike runners like Damian Penaud and Louis Bielle-Biarrey.

But if Jalibert is forced into delivering X-factor moments, I think there’s a good opportunity for England to limit the number of times he can deliver those to one or two in the game. Over the course of 80 minutes, you’d expect Dupont and Ntamack’s big moments to be far more frequent than that.

England also need to try and target the set-piece and disrupt ball, ensuring Dupont and Jalibert aren’t given clean possession.

This is, of course, all a hell of a lot easier said than done. All the best, lads!