Antoine Dupont and Matthieu Jalibert have thrilled during Les Bleus’ storming start to the Six Nations
T
he greatest double acts roll off the tongue. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Morecambe and Wise, Lennon and McCartney. It’s the same in sport: Lillee and Thomson, Torvill and Dean, Redgrave and Pinsent. After a while their individual talents complement each other so perfectly it becomes hard to mention one without the other.
Which is what is now happening on the rugby fields of Europe. For Butch and Sundance read Antoine Dupont and Matthieu Jalibert, the creative partnership behind a France team weaving the prettiest of Six Nations patterns. Between them “Jalipont” are helping to fashion some of the most spectacular attacking rugby anyone could wish for.
And to think people thought it might not work. That the parallel club universes of Toulouse and Bordeaux-Beglès, like star-crossed lovers, could never be intertwined. Instead, we could just be witnessing one of the great sporting collaborations, an example of what is possible when two shimmering individual talents mesh together and subvert their egos for the common good.
