It was one of the great dramas of the Rugby World Cup, which ended on Sunday with the coronation of South Africa, the fourth in its history. Victim of a maxillo-zygomatic fracture during the third match of the group stage against Namibia, Antoine Dupont was the center of concern for many days. These slightest actions and gestures were spied on, as were those of his surgeon, Professor Frédéric Lauwers. The captain of the French XV was finally able to participate in the quarter-final against South Africa, just three weeks after his operation.
This Wednesday, Professor Lauwers returned to this episode to AFP. And he was clear: “I wouldn’t want us to come away from this story by saying that what we did for Antoine Dupont was risky. If we put it on the field, it’s because we knew it wasn’t. We have controlled the risks.” But everything was not so simple. The media hype, in particular, was a difficult thing for the surgeon to control.
“We had the impression that everything was subject to a public vote”
“The press had already operated on him at 4 p.m. while I was still waiting for him in the hospital,” he regretted. There were journalists on every floor. Then, everything was linked to the resumption of activity. We had to give answers before even seeing him or just after operating on him when it didn’t make sense. Suddenly everyone wanted him to play against Italy, suddenly 56% of the French said that he was cannon fodder, that they were going to kill him, that he should not play. It felt like everything was put to a public vote.”
Frédéric Lauwers, however, assured that he did not feel any particular pressure when operating on the captain of the Blues. “Antoine Dupont is the Stade Toulouse, someone we meet, someone we know,” he underlined. It’s Castelnau-Magnoac, the Hautes-Pyrénées, Bigorre. I am Tarbais. It might have been more complicated to operate on Ardie Savea (All Blacks player), for different reasons. The first is the prospect of being able to follow the case to the end, because it is not the surgical procedure that does everything. In Dupont’s case, it was fine (for follow-up). The pressure comes from everything that is happening around, from the hubbub, from the buzz. »
Attentive during the quarter-final
This constant emulation did not prevent him from doing his work according to the rules of the art. And despite the criticism, the surgeon assures us: the treatment was not too fast. “I remember operating one day before the end of the second half of a match on a player who had been injured in the first,” said Professor Lauwers. If we start procrastinating, waiting for things to deflate, it’s doomed in advance. This is not inherent to Dupont. We didn’t have any pressure from the staff.”
Present at the Stade de France for the quarter-final, a match during which Antoine Dupont wore a helmet, on the advice of his surgeon, Frédéric Lauwers kept an eye on his patient. “I watched Antoine a lot to see how he was going,” he confided. I even discussed it directly with Fabien Galthié because I was interested in having his vision of his competitiveness, his level of performance… He told me that everything was normal. I watched the match again on TV and he takes direct hits, he goes into the tackle without any apprehension.” However, this was not enough to overcome this pitfall of the quarter-finals and prolong the Blues’ dream.
