In Sunday’s TOP14 match, two titans of this year’s Investec Champions Cup went head-to-head with Stade Toulousain and Union Bordeaux-Begles doing battle at the Nouveau Stade de Bordeaux.

Both are among the favourites for this year’s edition of EPCR’s elite title, and while the pitch was full of French superstars from Thomas Ramos to Maxime Lucu and Damian Penaud, all eyes were on Dupont despite him not starting.

The match marked his return to club XV-a-side rugby and both he, and the match, did not disappoint.

Head Coach Ugo Mola might have wanted to ease the star back into the action, with one eye on the difficult test against Racing 92 in the Investec Champions Cup Round of 16 in two weeks, but Ramos picked up an injury early on and Dupont stepped into the limelight once more.

Dupont looked even better than he did before he left for Sevens, leading a Stade Toulousain fightback from 24-7 down at the break to the verge of a famous comeback victory as they led 28-24.

In the end, Union Bordeaux-Begles picked up the game’s final crucial score to win 31-28, but Dupont would not be subdued and ran 60 metres from one end of the field to the other to give his club a fighting chance in the final moments.

The record five-time champions of EPCR’s elite competition soon earned a penalty, but opted to go for touch and try to win rather than take the draw, a decision which ultimately lost them the game.

Yet there could be no denying who the standout player on the pitch was – back from Sevens (for now), Dupont looks better than ever.