France v England: In conversation the France flanker is intensely shy and soft-spoken while evincing a Zen-like calm and modesty, but on the rugby field he becomes a veritable wrecking machine, writes Gerry Thornley.
Thierry Dusautoir is the kind of person you see but don't hear and, for opponents, the kind of player you don't see but you definitely feel. An intelligent, soft-spoken, reserved but intensely driven young man, the Ivory Coast-born flanker came of age as a frontline test player last Saturday in Cardiff. Among France's 15 heroes, none were more heroic than Dusautoir.
The official match statistics credit him with a scarcely credible 29 tackles; only seven fewer than the All Blacks' combined tally. It was as if when Serge Betsen departed injured within the first five minutes, Dusautoir took on the work of two men.
And then there was his try, taking a straight line on to Vincent Clerc's pass and eluding Leon MacDonald with a sway of the hips.
There's much more to this fellow than meets the eye.
On Wednesday, he sat at the front of the media room in the squad's Marcoussis base and fielded questions. Exuding astonishing calm, he spoke so softly that microphones were almost pushed into his face, which was regularly lit up by a slight grin. Then he stood up to take questions in English, again grinning slightly and answering via the interpreter.
You wonder if Dusautoir and co can possibly scale such emotional, mental and physical heights again. He wonders too.
"The All Blacks match was very difficult. It was a very physical game, the hardest physically that I have played in. The tension and the pressure around that kind of match is difficult to take. We cannot be euphoric with ourselves until we get to the end. We have to keep focused on what needs to be done."
You wonder too what on earth stoked such a performance, and on closer examination you discern it was the culmination of a sequence of events. As with the Cameroon-born Betsen, France's other flanker hails from West Africa, generating the hope that a World Cup victory for these blues might prompt a unifying wave of multiracial euphoria à la the footballers of 1998.
His father was a French soldier, his mother from the Côte d'Ivoire, from where they moved to the small town of Trèlissac in the Dordogne. Asked if he was ever attracted to football, Dusautoir smiled: "No, I have two left feet."
His parents made him take up judo when he was four because he was wild: "That taught me discipline. For sure, it is an individual sport and when you go on to the tatami (mat) it is to crush your opponent."
Even so, his colour and accent meant that as a six-year-old he was continually slagged in the school yard, which made him timid and reserved: "I hate that period when I'm on my own. I prefer it when I can finally benefit from people who surround me."
That came by dint of rugby, though while his mother is a rugby fan, like many in the Côte d'Ivoire , she was disinclined to let her son play the game after Max Brito was paralysed at the 1995 World Cup.
"Ultimately, it was my friends who persuaded her to let me play. I started when I was 16 through a friend of mine who brought me to a rugby match. I came and played and it went really well. I loved it straight away so I kept it up," he says, smiling slightly again.
Studies still came first, but having started out with Colomiers, he won two back-to-back Boucliers du Brennus with Biarritz.
His move to Toulouse was prompted by the club's ability to secure a job for his girlfriend Julie, like him also an engineer, with one of the club's sponsors, the Airbus company EADS.
His way of imposing himself at a new club is simply to flog himself. In his last two years at Biarritz he was their most-used player, playing over 40 games each season, though at Toulouse he arrived injured, having sprained knee ligaments while playing against South Africa.
"The lads are brave to talk to me. In their place I wouldn't talk to me," Dusautoir had whispered to Julie one evening on returning from training at Biarritz. He doesn't recall the circumstances but smiles when reminded of that comment.
"Titi", as he is known to his friends only, doesn't like to be noticed. You don't enter his world without knocking. The outgoing Yannick Nyanga was the first to make Dusautoir emerge from his shell at Toulouse.
"It didn't upset me," he says. "On the contrary, I liked it. I love relaxing, having fun. I just find it hard to reveal myself. I don't open up at a first meeting."
Maybe this emanates from the individualism of judo as well as his shy nature and tough school days, but he thrives in rugby's shared sense of combat.
"When you see a chap uprooting himself for you, you know whom to trust. Rugby is a way of living the truth," he once said.
Dusautoir also found it difficult to adapt to the greater emphasis on fitness and the less structured style at Toulouse: "From having most periods of play preplanned at BO, at Toulouse you are expected to be able to anticipate what your partner's going to do. In the first period you know where you're going. Then evaluation is left to the ball carrier, a philosophy of play repeated in training. But it's also important to know your partners' temperaments.
"Afterwards it's a real pleasure understanding one's team-mates and guessing what they have in mind. Then you think 'I'm part of this team'."
His coach at Toulouse, Guy Noves, says: "He arrived from BO with huge technical baggage, notably in defence. Thanks to the Toulouse school, which was complementary, he became more of a ball player. He reminds me of Jean-Pierre Rives, who was as effective on the ball offensively as defensively. He is capable of going from one to the other with the same lucidity."
Dusautoir is widely regarded as the biggest hitter in French rugby, a view his Toulouse team-mate Trevor Brennan has long held.
"He mixes well with everyone, but he's a fairly quiet fella who keeps very much to himself. But when he came from Biarritz he brought an extra edge to Toulouse with his ball carrying and most of all his tackling. If he lines you up and hits you properly, he'll cut you in two," says Brennan admiringly.
"The crowd at Toulouse go 'Oooh'. Even when he misses someone the crowd go 'Oooh'."
France's defensive coach Dave Ellis says, "There is no emotion on his face. It is difficult to get two words out of him. He just sits there calmly and takes everything in, then he goes out on to the field and changes into a monster. He's the dark destroyer."
Yet, having been pitched into the French team in the summer of 2006, Dusautoir was quickly jettisoned by Bernard Laporte after the 47-3 defeat to the All Blacks in Lyon and omitted from the Six Nations.
He didn't even make the cut for the World Cup squad of 30, retreating with his family and girlfriend to Corsica, whereupon Elvis Vermeulen of Clermont Auvergne was ruled out and Dusautoir was called back in.
He has retained that burning disappointment as motivation.
"Since the beginning of my preparation for the World Cup I've had a certain mind frame: I want to show people what I'm capable of playing and that is my intention in every game."
Dusautoir radiates an almost Zen-like serenity. As the French players eyeballed their All Black foes at the haka, French TV showed the naked aggression of the Caveman Sebastien Chabal and the scornful look of Imanol Harinordoquy. In between them, you hardly noticed the apparently emotionless Dusautoir.
"I had a score to settle with them. They (the All Blacks) represented my eviction from the French team. I was murdered in the press. I didn't think I deserved such treatment. I had my head in the bottom of the bag."
There followed a "long desert crossing", as he calls it.
Now, he appreciates that this is the chance of a lifetime, but a resurgent England stand in the way.
"They are the world champions and I still regard them as such. They take every chance they get to put points on the board and we have to be as disciplined . . . as we were last week."
Recalling his reprieve from Corsica, he concludes: "This is not something that happens very often in a rugby player's career. I'm very lucky to be here. I think that will be a boost to each of our players but we have to look deep within ourselves to find the motivation."
Thierry Dusautoir CV
Born: November 18th, 1981, in Abidjan (Ivory Coast)
Clubs: Colomiers, Biarritz, Toulouse
French Championships: Two, with Biarritz, 2005 and 2006.
Joined Toulouse in 2006
French debut: v Romania, June 2006
