A common theme of last weekend’s Champions Cup semi-finals was the influence of the four scrum-halves, the catalysts of teams that look to get the ball away quickly and attack space.
Antoine Dupont, Jamison Gibson-Park, Alex Mitchell and Danny Care all featured in last year’s World Cup and three – the Frenchman took a sabbatical to prepare for the summer Olympics in Paris – were involved in the Six Nations with England joining Ireland and France in measuring the value of a scrum-half in an all-court game rather than the hang time of box kicks.
The clash between Dupont and Gibson-Park will be...