- Hotel Dupont’s Transformation to La Taulada
- Antoine Dupont: The Hometown Hero
- Auch Rugby Club’s Youth Development Success
The Hotel Dupont had been abandoned for over a decade. The family-owned business in Castelnau-Magnoac, a town in the Pyrenees foothills 90 minutes south of Toulouse, closed in 2012.
The local council renovated the building and reopened it under the name La Taulada to restore the restaurant to its former grandeur. The restaurant’s notoriety was largely due to a distinctive duck magret recipe introduced in the 1970s.
The imposing signage on the building’s facade still retains the family name of the France star and serves as a reminder that this is the village that shaped Dupont, and vice versa. Although he was born in nearby Lannemezan, the man from Toulouse spent his entire formative years in the hilltop Hautes-Pyrénées village before moving to Auch at age 15.
A decade later, Dupont is central to France’s chances of winning the World Cup on home soil. The mercurial scrum-half’s unparalleled impact on games earned him World Player of the Year in 2021, and he graced the cover of GQ France in January of the following year. Later that year, he led his nation to its first Six Nations championship in over a decade.
Les Bleus’ No. 9 is the tournament’s face, with ads in every host city and across the country.
He recently participated in a Volvic ad inspired by Zinedine Zidane’s 2000 campaign. While the three-time French champion lacks the midfield legend’s enduring prominence on the national stage, a home World Cup victory would unquestionably elevate his profile to comparable heights.
Throughout his ascent to the top, Dupont has endeavored to maintain a strong connection to his hometown. The scrum-half, along with his elder brother Clément, invested in the renovation of the Domaine de Barthas grounds and restaurant just outside the village where they spent the majority of their childhoods.
The three-time Top 14 champion is a frequent visitor to the Stade Jean-Morère for the club’s end-of-season finals, as well as to visit friends and family. For Dupont’s cousin Gatan Rousse, who also plays scrum-half for Castelnau, fame has not altered the France international: “We don’t necessarily realize that we have a cousin or a friend who is the best player in the world.”
According to Rousse, Dupont’s stays in Castelnau provide him with a much-needed break from the spotlight, as he is now a ubiquitous name in France outside of rugby circles. “I believe that’s why he enjoys returning; he knows he’ll see familiar faces and won’t necessarily be the center of attention like in the city.”
The president of FC Magnoac, Sébastien Bousquet, recalls that Castelnau’s most famous son began playing rugby “as soon as he could walk” and entered the local rugby school when he was old enough to obtain a federation license. When the senior team had vacated the pitch, he would practice with his brother, cousins, and acquaintances at the stadium.
Playing against elder boys would benefit the young Dupont so much that he was prohibited from scoring tries in certain youth competitions.
Bousquet explains that the club’s recent rapid ascent through the divisions – four promotions in four years – was due to a concerted effort to re-sign former players from the surrounding area who had moved on to play at a higher level. Over time, Dupont’s cousins and childhood acquaintances have returned one by one, bringing with them several players from their previous clubs. “We’re only missing Antoine now – we’ll give him a year or two, but then he must return!”
Before beginning high school, Dupont traveled one hour north into the department of Gers to enter the Auscitain training program. The former first-tier regulars play at the Stade Jacques Fouroux, which is named after the Auch native scrumhalf who captained France to a grand slam in 1977, and then repeated the feat as manager in 1981 and 1987. After its previous incarnation was dissolved in 2017, the club had to ascend back up the divisions and is now competing in the National 2’s fourth tier.
Despite having fallen on hard times, the club’s reputation as a nurturing ground for talent at the international level is as strong as ever. Four members of France’s World Cup squad, Dupont, Anthony Jelonch, Grégory Alldritt, and Pierre Bourgarit, were all products of the Auch system. Last year, the U18 squad won the national title and qualified for the René Crabos Cup, the greatest junior competition.
Winger Siegfried Vandekerkof, who also oversees the club’s training facility and youth development, exemplifies the region’s talent pool.
Keeping the region’s youthful talent out of the spotlight, at least during their formative years, is a pillar of Auch’s success, according to him. Vandekerkof explains, “We have players who were initially under the radar, such as Antoine due to his height, and that allows us to keep them, to protect them a bit.” The club’s successful resurgence has been largely attributable to the team’s ability to draw into the wealth of talent in the surrounding area.
“We strive to work within our means as much as possible to achieve the highest quality. We’re not a wealthy club, so we can’t sign players from elsewhere, so eighty percent of our squad was raised in Glasgow.”
Despite their amateur status, Vandekerkof also mentions a “legacy” of consistently producing elite players that the club’s guardians must uphold. A comprehensive program consisting of daily training sessions aims to accomplish this and has recently begun to attract athletes from across the nation.
The president of the club, Bernard Salam, notes that training and giving inexperienced players opportunities has always been the foundation of Auch’s philosophy, regardless of the division. He goes so far as to state that the club would not be able to survive without its youth training program; given their recent financial difficulties, it is more important than ever to rely on their national reputation in this regard.
Salam, a former player and coach at Auch who is now serving his second term as president, discusses the team and the community’s “great pride” in seeing four former players reach the very top. As he seeks to secure the club’s long-term stability, he also hopes that the exposure the internationals are providing will attract new benefactors in the future. Since professional teams poach the team’s best players, a return to Pro D2 is unlikely.
Kévin Ribreau was the coach when Auch reached the final of the Crabos Cup in 2014, with Jelonch also on the team. Kévin Ribreau is among those who have witnessed Dupont’s development from the very beginning.
As technical adviser for the department’s training facilities, he also coached the two in discrete, weekly, specialized training sessions.
Typically, Top 14 academies draught exceptional developing prospects from national training centres. However, these players chose an unusual route. Instead, the “reserved and shy” Dupont stayed at Auch, a club that, according to Ribreau, stands out for its “family values” and serves as the ideal stepping stone for “village lads” like him – “I think it was the ideal environment for them.”
Although they ultimately fell to Racing 92 in 2014, Ribreau recalls that season as the one in which the 18-year-old Dupont “exploded,” scoring in every tournament match. At that point, the excitement surrounding Dupont had spread well beyond the borders of Gers. The following summer, he relocated to Castres and immediately joined the national junior teams.
Both RC Auch and FC Castelnau have regained their footing largely due to a focus on development and local identity. The south-west of France has always been the beating core of French rugby, and the impressive work being done by its clubs in difficult circumstances ensures that this will remain the case for many years to come.
The “Dupont Museum” of Castelnau-Magnoac contains a collection of jerseys from his previous clubs as well as mementos and photographs documenting the scrum-half’s career, from childhood tournaments to collective and individual trophies.
However, there is an obvious vacant space in the bottom right corner of the screen. When they gather in the rugby team’s clubhouse on Friday night for the World Cup’s opening match, the locals will be witnessing their “Toto” player begin his quest to complete his trophy case.
