France 43 – 0 Wales

Antoine Dupont inspires France to crushing victory over Wales in Paris with three try assists; Wales kept from scoring in Six Nations match for first time as seven France tries go unanswered

Antoine Dupont stole the show on his Six Nations return as France inflicted a 13th straight defeat on Wales with a crushing 43-0 opening-night victory in Paris.

After guiding France to rugby sevens gold at last summer’s Olympics, the Stade de France was once again rejoicing at the brilliance of Dupont, who assisted three of the four first-half tries wingers Theo Attissogbe and Louis Bielle-Biarrey shared.

Dupont’s mesmeric opportunism featured cross-field kicks and surgical dissections of the Welsh defence, who began their daunting assignment in the French capital positively but were ultimately forced into submission as they failed to score a point for the first time in a Six Nations game.

With a bonus-point secured before half-time and the foundations for victory laid, Dupont’s cameo would last 50 minutes, as it was left to second-half tries from Julien Marchand, Emilien Gailleton and Gregory Alldritt to hammer home France’s dominance.

The only blot on an otherwise perfect night for Fabien Galthie’s side was the dismissal of fly-half Romain Ntamack, who will miss Saturday’s clash against England after his high tackle on Ben Thomas was upgraded to red.

Wales were not expected to cause an upset in Paris, but the manner in which Friday’s chastening defeat descended into an ill-disciplined and toothless performance will raise concern ahead of next week’s crunch showdown against Italy in Rome.

‘No excuses’ from Gatland

It proved to be another painful experience for Wales and under-pressure head coach Warren Gatland on what was his 150th game as their head coach.

“I think we started off alright, we tried to play some rugby, probably on a couple of plays overplayed a little bit,” he said.

“I thought we scrummaged well and the forwards worked really hard, in terms of trying to get front foot ball.

“But there’s no excuses about the result. I thought we created a couple of opportunities and we didn’t finish them.

“We’ve just got to make sure we get back on the horse and look forward to preparing for next week.”

Morgan: Wales can claim ‘significant’ Italy win

It was a demoralising Six Nations start for Wales, who finished only a point short of equalling their all-time worst defeat in the tournament of 54-10 against Ireland 23 years ago.

Captain Jac Morgan conceded a lack of discipline cost scoreless Wales.

“It was a tough night, obviously we are disappointed with the result. We knew how dangerous France can be.

“Discipline probably let us down quite a bit in that game, and against a team like France, they capitalise on your ill discipline and your mistakes, and that’s what they did today.

“Sometimes we weren’t quite accurate enough or clinical enough with the ball in hand, and we didn’t quite take our opportunities, and if you do a mistake then France will punish you.”

Wales travel to Italy next, where they will hope to end their 13-game winless slump and take a step towards avoiding another Six Nations wooden spoon.

Morgan added: “Definitely there’s a lot good there, a lot of promise, and we know we’ve just got to stay tight as a group now and keep on building over the next few weeks.

“Italy is significant, and we will take it week on week. We know how tight and how close we are as a group, and we want to keep on getting better and keep on improving and that’s what we will do this week.

“Definitely we’ve got the talent. We’ve got a load of talent, and we’ve got a lot of hard work in the group, and that’s something we’ll go through next week and just keep on building, keep on improving, and that will come through.”

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