In a press release issued on Friday morning, September 22, the French Rugby Federation announced that "Antoine Dupont has suffered a maxillo-zygomatic fracture" following his injury on Thursday in a clash with a Namibian player in Marseille during the Rugby World Cup group stage match.
"A specialist surgical opinion has been requested in order to define the exact duration of his unavailability," said the press release. The captain "remains with the France squad" announced the French team.
The injury to the captain of the team, one of the tournament favorites, cast a shadow on the France-Namibia match on Thursday evening, won by Les Bleus. The French scrum-half Dupont was caught in a high tackle that forced him off the pitch in the 96-0 World Cup thrashing of Namibia on Thursday, coach Fabien Galthié said.
The influential Dupont, who had earlier scored a try, left the pitch in Marseille in the 46th minute nursing his right cheekbone after Johan Deysel made a badly-timed head-on-head tackle and was sent off.
Namibia coach Allister Coetzee called Deysel's tackle an "unfortunate accident." "This is the way the game's going," said ex-Springbok coach Coetzee. "It's unintentional, it happened so quickly. Dupont is not the tallest guy. Johan is a clean player, he's got no record of cards in the past, and he's a great defender.
"It's not unfair, but it's a pity it happened to him. He's the captain, he's a brave player, he's the glue of the team and he feels it," Coetzee added. "It was an accident, an unfortunate one and we had to take that on the chin. He's cut up right now."
Galthié admitted that the injury to Dupont had taken some of the gloss off a French record 14-try victory at Marseille's Stade Velodrome. "Of course when one of our players gets injured, we're never happy, we're always extremely concerned," he said. "It's not the same thing as if we had no injuries."
Galthié, who sent a text message to Dupont at the start of the post-match press conference, bristled when questioned if he'd thought about replacing the scrum-half at half-time
"I knew I was going to be asked this," said the former France captain. "The program was to change the two props. You can't change all 15 players at half-time. Our plan was that we're going to rotate the rest of the squad around the 55th minute. It was all about giving players game time so they don't stay inactive for a month. This team wanted to be out there playing."
France flanker Charles Ollivon said it was obvious Deysel's tackle on Dupont was a nasty one. It was pretty late and his head was hit," Ollivon said. "It was immediately clear to everyone." English referee Matthew Carley initially handed Deysel a yellow card, which was upgraded to red by the bunker review system.