Duputs: the concussion he had feared since March?

Agen’s win over Colomiers (37-21) left an image nobody in the Lot-et-Garonne camp wanted to discuss straight after the game.

It happened two minutes from the end of a game with nothing at stake. Hit in the head, Arnaud Duputs stayed down, then ran to the dressing room in tears, accompanied by his partner. He did not return to the huddle formed by his team-mates at the final whistle.

The silence that followed said as much as words. Mauricio Reggiardo, usually talkative, chose not to speak. Guillaume Jan declined to comment “out of respect” for the player. Only president Jean-François Fonteneau spoke: “He’s a lad who means a lot to the club, and he’d actually played well. I’m sad and disappointed for him, of course, because if it really is a concussion…”

“If I get another concussion soon, it’ll be over”

Those were Duputs’s own words, told to Sud Ouest last spring as he recovered from a previous concussion. He returned to action at the end of April, at Oyonnax, after several months out, and played seven games until the end of the season. The 31-year-old back-row forward has been picking up these injuries since the start of his career, at Bayonne and then at Agen.

A career shrinking season after season

His team-sheet count tells the same story as the medical bulletins. Developed and handed his debut at Bayonne, where he played in the Top 14 and the Champions Cup, Duputs had his busiest season in 2021-2022 with twenty games. Since then, his playing time has been cut by two-thirds.

In all, 114 professional games since his Bayonne debut in 2015-2016, including twenty in the Top 14 and nine in the Challenge Cup.

No decision has been announced at this stage, and the club has not released a diagnosis. But with repeated concussions, the protocol requires a long stand-down, and it was the player himself who drew the line five months ago.