Ireland scrum-half Jamison Gibson-Park says that France captain Antoine Dupont can “do stuff that not many others are capable of” ahead of Thursday’s opening Six Nations game in Paris (20:10 GMT).<\/p>\n
Scrum-half Dupont ruptured cruciate ligaments in his knee last March during the Six Nations match against Ireland and was sidelined for eight months.<\/p>\n
Despite not playing for Les Bleus since, the 29-year-old returned to club rugby for Toulouse in November and is set to play a key role in this Six Nations as France aim to defend their title.<\/p>\n
“He [Dupont] is not the only one, France have some serious weapons across the whole team” Gibson-Park said.<\/p>\n
“Quite a lot of prep goes into stopping him [Dupont]. We all know the threat he poses. We have seen a lot of stuff over the last number of years of him doing stuff that not many others are capable of.<\/p>\n
“I have had some pretty good draws with him over the years, particularly at club level, he poses a serious threat for sure.”<\/p>\n
Ireland’s preparation for the Six Nations has been hindered by setbacks with prop Jack Boyle and forward Tom Ahern both forced to withdraw through injury. <\/p>\n
Centre Bundee Aki will miss the opening three games through suspension with Hugo Keenan’s availability for the Six Nations unclear after the full-back fractured his thumb during Ireland’s training camp in Portugal.<\/p>\n
With those injury concerns, head coach Andy Farrell has named Thomas Clarkson and Jeremy Loughman as his props, while Cian Prendergast got the nod in the back row.<\/p>\n
James Lowe has been dropped for Jacob Stockdale on the left wing, while Jamie Osborne starts in place of Keenan at full-back.<\/p>\n
“There are no excuses now,” added Gibson-Park.<\/p>\n
“You can’t afford to start slow, especially to France away and we have prepared well.<\/p>\n
“There is no bigger challenge, is there?”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ireland scrum-half Jamison Gibson-Park says that France captain Antoine Dupont can “do stuff that not many others are…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":407237,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[5903,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-407236","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-rugby","tag-rugby","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/407236","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=407236"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/407236\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/407237"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=407236"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=407236"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=407236"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}