France feel 'anger' after Dupont injury, says head coach Galthie

Fabien Galthie said France felt "anger" after Antoine Dupont suffered a "serious" knee injury during their Six Nations victory over Ireland.

Les Bleus took a huge step towards claiming their first championship in three years, with a 42-27 win in Dublin seeing them displace the Irish at the table's summit.

However, the victory was somewhat marred by injury to Dupont, who was forced off in the 30th minute at the Aviva Stadium.

The France skipper was challenged by Tadhg Beirne, who then fell on the scrum-half's right leg as team-mate Andrew Porter joined the subsequent ruck.

Though the incident was not reviewed by TMO during the game, Galthie said he had referred the Ireland duo to the citing commissioner for potential retrospective punishment.

"We're suspecting something serious," the head coach said of Dupont's injury.

"We want explanations, so we've named two players. We have to protect our players. There are means, there are rules. There is some kind of anger [in the camp]."

Gregory Alldritt, who took over the armband from Dupont, acknowledged his injury "added a bit of fire to our bellies" heading into the second half, during which France scored 34 unanswered points.

"When I return to the dressing room and I see one of my best friends looking like that, it tears up one's insides," Alldritt added. "It is difficult to talk about. However, it added a bit of fire to our bellies for the second half."

Meanwhile, Ireland interim head coach Simon Easterby leapt to his players' defence, insisting Dupont was the unfortunate victim of a "rugby incident".

"Tadhg [Beirne] cleans out someone in front of Antoine Dupont, and he gets hit on the back of it," Easterby said.

"We have moved away and players have a real awareness now of clearing out the lower limb of the player, which can create that type of injury that might have happened today, but that wasn't the case.

"He was securing his own ball and not making contact on Dupont. The guy that Tadhg hit was hit on to Dupont. It's just one of those things, unfortunately. It happens in the game."