Antoine Dupont orchestrates Toulouse’s Champions Cup thrashing of Exeter
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Another lop-sided pool game and a further reminder of life’s fluctuating fortunes. Five years ago Exeter were beating Toulouse en route to winning the Champions Cup and putting the seal on one of English team sport’s great Cinderella tales. These days the gap between the teams is such a yawning chasm that the French visitors had a bonus point wrapped up after just 35 minutes.
![[Jack Willis tackled by Dan Frost]](https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/96621a90139c79605960b8825c6f9f55a820cb7f/0_162_4860_2916/master/4860.jpg?width=445&dpr=1&s=none&crop=none)
To be fair to Exeter, the defending champions are in a sufficiently rich vein of form in this competition that it almost doesn’t matter whom they are playing against. Having topped 60 points at home to Ulster, Toulouse were once again in irresistible mood with the peerless Antoine Dupont artfully pulling the strings in a 10-try masterclass.
Simply to watch Dupont play live is a privilege right now and, at times, he turned the Chiefs’ players into virtual spectators as well. France’s finest were 35-7 up by half-time, their dexterity and connectivity a joy to behold. It was at least a couple of levels up pace-wise from the tempo of the average Premiership side and underlined why Toulouse are the team to beat in this season’s tournament.
“There were a few things they did that were undefendable,” confirmed Rob Baxter, Exeter’s director of rugby. From the Chiefs’ struggling perspective, though, this record tournament thrashing was the most sobering of pre-Christmas outcomes. Sacking their defence coach has not, on this evidence, solved all their problems and they would have been buried without trace without a brace of spirited tries from the left-wing Tommy Wyatt. No one expected them to win this game but this was the highest number of points anyone has scored against them at Sandy Park and one or two of Toulouse’s scores were painfully soft.
