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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Sport
Robert Kitson

France’s creative heart ‘Jalipont’ can easily join rugby’s great double-acts

Matthieu Jalibert does a lap of honour after the Six Nations rout of Wales in Cardiff.
Matthieu Jalibert does a lap of honour after the Six Nations rout of Wales in Cardiff. Photograph: Paul Ellis/AFP/Getty Images

The 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.

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