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Tommy Freeman insists England are confident of containing France’s scrum-half genius Antoine Dupont in Saturday’s Allianz Stadium showdown.
Dupont underlined his creative brilliance in Friday’s demolition of Wales to provide more compelling evidence to those who argue that he is the sport’s greatest player of all time.
England have been busy devising a strategy to prevent the Toulouse ringmaster from running the show in a must-win encounter and Freeman insists he is not invulnerable.
“You can’t underestimate how good a player he is, but he’s human. He’s like everyone else – you take his legs and he goes down,” the Northampton wing said.
“It’s all about picking things up nice and early with him and putting him under pressure.
“I’m sure like any other player, when you put pressure on them they start to leak a few opportunities.”
France set the Six Nations alight with their 43-0 Dupont-inspired drubbing of Wales and fears are growing that they are poised to inflict further misery on England.
A 27-22 defeat by Ireland on Saturday registered a record-equalling seventh successive defeat against top tier opposition for Steve Borthwick’s side. One more loss would represent a new low in the nation’s 154 rugby history.
On current form the Twickenham showdown is a mismatch, but Freeman is adamant that England can pull off the upset.
“Of course we can. At the end of the day everyone is human, it’s rugby,” Freeman said.
“They’ll have a gameplan, we’ll have a gameplan and we’ll back ours to the moon and back. They’ll do the same to theirs. We’ll give ours as best a shot as we can.
“Obviously we wanted to come away with a result against Ireland. We felt like our first half was unbelievable. We came out firing and left it all out there.
“There was probably an element in the second half where we lapsed in concentration and a few things didn’t go our way.
“We’re disappointed with that, but the promise we’ve got in this squad means it’s going to tick and it’s going to change. Hopefully we’ll get on the right side of the results.”
Cadan Murley has emerged as a doubt against France because of a foot problem sustained in Dublin that forced him to miss Monday’s training session.
The 25-year-old Harlequins wing made his Test debut at the Aviva Stadium and while he ran in the opening try, he was responsible for two glaring errors that invited pressure on to England, leaving him fighting for his place in the team.
Ollie Sleightholme is the most likely alternative to fill the number 11 jersey if Murley is ruled out as England look to give their Six Nations lift off by toppling France.
