France head coach Fabien Galthie has reacted furiously to a potentially serious injury for his captain Antoine Dupont, following his side's 42-27 win against Ireland at Aviva Stadium.
Dupont was helped from the pitch midway through the first half with what appears to be a serious knee injury, which could rule the scrum-half out of action long-term.
The former World Player of the Year jarred his knee when Tadhg Beirne collided with him at a ruck, but no action was taken by the referee Angus Gardner, or TMO Ian Tempest, who deemed it a "rugby incident".
France went on to dominate Ireland in the third quarter, and take a considerable leap towards winning the Guinness Six Nations title.
But, speaking after the game, the France head coach didn't hide his feelings.
"We feel bad for [Antoine]. In terms of the action, in my opinion it was reprehensible, and there are ways to study and analyse it," Galthie told France 2 TV.
France lost Antoine Dupont during the first half, however, former Ireland player and RTE pundit Jamie Heaslip felt there was no malice and it was accidental.
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"We feel for him today. He is suffering and we are suffering with him."
While he didn't reveal the extent of the injury, the French coach suggested it could rule Dupont out for the foreseeable future, adding they will be reporting the incident to the citing commissioner, along with Calvin Nash who was yellow-carded for a head contact on Pierre-Louis Barassi.
"There is a suspicion of a quite serious knee injury to Antoine. He is suffering - let's say it how it is. I don't want to go into details, mainly due to medical confidentiality.
"We have cited two players - Tadhg Beirne and Andrew Porter - in our post-match report.
"We have also highlighted Calvin Nash to the citing commissioner for [the incident with] Pierre-Louis Barassi, who did not respond well to the HIA protocol. We had players who never came back on.
"We are angry and we want an explanation; so, we have cited two players. We must protect our players. There are rules, regulations... there's a sort of anger.
"I do not want to pass judgment on the quality of refereeing today.
"The citing commissioner will decide whether these actions were reprehensible or not."
Ireland head coach Simon Easterby did his best to fan those flames, insisting there was little Beirne could have done to avoid contact.
"I think it’s just a rugby incident where Tadhg cleans out someone in front of Antoine Dupont (above) and he gets hit on the back of that," Easterby said.
"You know, this happens unfortunately. We have definitely moved away and players have a real awareness now of cleaning out on the lower limb of a player, which can create the 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 and unfortunately that happens.
"The guy that Tadhg hit was hit onto Dupont and it’s just one of those things unfortunately. It happens in a game. I’ll probably have to look back on it again but we feel like the right decision was made there."
World Rugby have been clamping down on hits around the knee in the past year, outlawing the croc-roll method, while Ireland’s Tom O’Toole missed the opening two games of the championship as part of his six-game ban for a red card for Ulster against Munster, when he collapsed into the leg of Alex Nankivell in a pre-Christmas derby at Kingspan Stadium.
