France without injured Dupont takes over Six Nations lead after crushing Ireland

DUBLIN (AP) — France's hand replaced Ireland's on the Six Nations rugby trophy after a momentous 42-27 win at Aviva Stadium on Saturday.

France decisively took over the lead of the championship with a bonus-point victory and can clinch its first title since 2022 in the final round at home next Saturday when it hosts Scotland.

Meanwhile, Ireland's Grand Slam hopes were destroyed in the fourth round for a second straight year, and its hopes of a third successive outright title, unprecedented in the tournament's 142-year history, were probably sunk.

England was also in the title picture, barring an upset at home against Italy on Sunday, but France's other big advantage was an extremely healthy points differential of +106, which is 93 points better than Ireland.

The breadth of France's win by five tries to three, running up its highest score in Ireland, was even more impressive in the absence for the last 50 minutes of injured captain Antoine Dupont.

A serious-looking right knee injury to the talismanic scrumhalf prompted France coach Fabien Galthie to cite Ireland's Tadhg Beirne and Andrew Porter.

"Antoine is suffering and we are suffering with him," Galthie said. “We are angry.”

As to the result, however, the French were overjoyed.

“When great moments like this happen, we can thank each other, players and staff," Galthie said. "We weren't given anything, we earned everything. At halftime in our dressing room there were good vibes, a mix between real ambition and real anger.”

When Dupont limped off, France was leading 5-0 and the momentum was swinging their way.

France was on the ropes for the first 15 minutes, absorbing waves of Irish attacks. But when lock Joe McCarthy was sin-binned for a cynical foul, Dupont set up wing Louis Bielle-Biarrey for the first of his two tries against the run of play.

Ireland, trailing by two at halftime, led 13-8 soon after, but for only four minutes.

Flanker Paul Boudehent crashed over after offloads by prop Jean-Baptiste Gros and Maxime Lucu, Dupont's replacement.

In a double blow to Ireland, winger Calvin Nash was yellow-carded for a head-on-head tackle and France pulled away from there thanks to unleashing the seven reserves forwards off the bench.

Ireland couldn't withstand the injection of fresh power.

A France counter-ruck in its own half led to Damian Penaud freeing his fellow wing Bielle-Biarrey, who grubbered ahead and beat Lucu to ground the ball. The try was Bielle-Biarrey's tournament-leading seventh, and 17th in 18 tests.

Replacement lock Oscar Jegou scored his first test try and, while Gros was in the sin-bin, Thomas Ramos intercepted Ireland's Sam Prendergast 10 meters out from his own try-line and let Penaud finish between the posts for his 38th test try, tying the France record of Serge Blanco.

Ramos, as ever, was unerring by nailing his last seven goalkicks.

With victory long secure at 42-13, France took its foot off the pedal, and Ireland scored the last two tries, one of them to caps record-holder Cian Healy, who was playing his last test at home along with Conor Murray and Peter O'Mahony.

“It was a bit of a roller-coaster,” Ireland captain Caelan Doris said.

"We weren't clinical enough early on. We thought we were in contention at halftime, we felt confident. We started well and thought we could go on but that 25-minute period in the middle of the second half was where we just weren't good enough — our collisions, our discipline.

“They can create something from nothing with go-forward ball, and that's what happened two or three times in a row.”

Ireland was dealt a major blow moments before kickoff when wing James Lowe suffered a back spasm in the warmup and had to withdraw.

But the way Ireland started suggested France was in for a long afternoon. The Irish camped in the French 22 but breached an equally fierce defense only once, and Doris was held up over the line by opposite Gregory Alldritt.

After McCarthy's yellow card, his heft was missed when France mauled a lineout infield, shortened the defense and Bielle-Biarrey scored in a seventh straight test, eclipsing Penaud's France record.

Dupont then exited, exposing France's risk of a 7-1 bench with only one back reserve. But the gamble paid off handsomely. Lucu was outstanding and the “bomb squad,” notably Emmanuel Meafou and Julien Marchand, overpowered a tiring Ireland in the third quarter.

AP rugby: https://apnews.com/hub/rugby

France's Damian Penaud runs to score a try during the Six Nations rugby union match between Ireland and France, at Aviva Stadium, Dublin, Ireland, Saturday, March 8, 2025. (Niall Carson/PA via AP)

France's Oscar Jegou, bottom, scores a try during the Six Nations rugby union match between Ireland and France, at Aviva Stadium, Dublin, Ireland, Saturday, March 8, 2025. (AP Photo/Peter Morrison)

Ireland's Jack Conan dejected after a try was scored during the Six Nations rugby union match between Ireland and France, at Aviva Stadium, Dublin, Ireland, Saturday, March 8, 2025. (AP Photo/Peter Morrison)

France's Damian Penaud reacts after scoring a try during the Six Nations rugby union match between Ireland and France, at Aviva Stadium, Dublin, Ireland, Saturday, March 8, 2025. (AP Photo/Peter Morrison)

France's Damian Penaud runs to score a try during the Six Nations rugby union match between Ireland and France, at Aviva Stadium, Dublin, Ireland, Saturday, March 8, 2025. (AP Photo/Peter Morrison)

France's Damian Penaud, left, breaks away from Ireland's Sam Prendergast, to score a try during the Six Nations rugby union match between Ireland and France, at Aviva Stadium, Dublin, Ireland, Saturday, March 8, 2025. (AP Photo/Peter Morrison)

France's Oscar Jegou, centre, celebrates with his teammate Thibaud Flament, after scoring a try during the Six Nations rugby union match between Ireland and France, at Aviva Stadium, Dublin, Ireland, Saturday, March 8, 2025. (AP Photo/Peter Morrison)

France's Louis Bielle-Biarrey, centre, celebrates with his teammate Maxime Lucu, after scoring a try during the Six Nations rugby union match between Ireland and France, at Aviva Stadium, Dublin, Ireland, Saturday, March 8, 2025. (AP Photo/Peter Morrison)

WASHINGTON (AP) — Becky Pepper-Jackson finished third in the discus throw in West Virginia last year though she was in just her first year of high school. Now a 15-year-old sophomore, Pepper-Jackson is aware that her upcoming season could be her last.

West Virginia has banned transgender girls like Pepper-Jackson from competing in girls and women's sports, and is among the more than two dozen states with similar laws. Though the West Virginia law has been blocked by lower courts, the outcome could be different at the conservative-dominated Supreme Court, which has allowed multiple restrictions on transgender people to be enforced in the past year.

The justices are hearing arguments Tuesday in two cases over whether the sports bans violate the Constitution or the landmark federal law known as Title IX that prohibits sex discrimination in education. The second case comes from Idaho, where college student Lindsay Hecox challenged that state's law.

Decisions are expected by early summer.

President Donald Trump's Republican administration has targeted transgender Americans from the first day of his second term, including ousting transgender people from the military and declaring that gender is immutable and determined at birth.

Pepper-Jackson has become the face of the nationwide battle over the participation of transgender girls in athletics that has played out at both the state and federal levels as Republicans have leveraged the issue as a fight for athletic fairness for women and girls.

“I think it’s something that needs to be done,” Pepper-Jackson said in an interview with The Associated Press that was conducted over Zoom. “It’s something I’m here to do because ... this is important to me. I know it’s important to other people. So, like, I’m here for it.”

She sat alongside her mother, Heather Jackson, on a sofa in their home just outside Bridgeport, a rural West Virginia community about 40 miles southwest of Morgantown, to talk about a legal fight that began when she was a middle schooler who finished near the back of the pack in cross-country races.

Pepper-Jackson has grown into a competitive discus and shot put thrower. In addition to the bronze medal in the discus, she finished eighth among shot putters.

She attributes her success to hard work, practicing at school and in her backyard, and lifting weights. Pepper-Jackson has been taking puberty-blocking medication and has publicly identified as a girl since she was in the third grade, though the Supreme Court's decision in June upholding state bans on gender-affirming medical treatment for minors has forced her to go out of state for care.

Her very improvement as an athlete has been cited as a reason she should not be allowed to compete against girls.

“There are immutable physical and biological characteristic differences between men and women that make men bigger, stronger, and faster than women. And if we allow biological males to play sports against biological females, those differences will erode the ability and the places for women in these sports which we have fought so hard for over the last 50 years,” West Virginia's attorney general, JB McCuskey, said in an AP interview. McCuskey said he is not aware of any other transgender athlete in the state who has competed or is trying to compete in girls or women’s sports.

Despite the small numbers of transgender athletes, the issue has taken on outsize importance. The NCAA and the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committees banned transgender women from women's sports after Trump signed an executive order aimed at barring their participation.

The public generally is supportive of the limits. An Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll conducted in October 2025 found that about 6 in 10 U.S. adults “strongly” or “somewhat” favored requiring transgender children and teenagers to only compete on sports teams that match the sex they were assigned at birth, not the gender they identify with, while about 2 in 10 were “strongly” or “somewhat” opposed and about one-quarter did not have an opinion.

About 2.1 million adults, or 0.8%, and 724,000 people age 13 to 17, or 3.3%, identify as transgender in the U.S., according to the Williams Institute at the UCLA School of Law.

Those allied with the administration on the issue paint it in broader terms than just sports, pointing to state laws, Trump administration policies and court rulings against transgender people.

"I think there are cultural, political, legal headwinds all supporting this notion that it’s just a lie that a man can be a woman," said John Bursch, a lawyer with the conservative Christian law firm Alliance Defending Freedom that has led the legal campaign against transgender people. “And if we want a society that respects women and girls, then we need to come to terms with that truth. And the sooner that we do that, the better it will be for women everywhere, whether that be in high school sports teams, high school locker rooms and showers, abused women’s shelters, women’s prisons.”

But Heather Jackson offered different terms to describe the effort to keep her daughter off West Virginia's playing fields.

“Hatred. It’s nothing but hatred,” she said. "This community is the community du jour. We have a long history of isolating marginalized parts of the community.”

Pepper-Jackson has seen some of the uglier side of the debate on display, including when a competitor wore a T-shirt at the championship meet that said, “Men Don't Belong in Women's Sports.”

“I wish these people would educate themselves. Just so they would know that I’m just there to have a good time. That’s it. But it just, it hurts sometimes, like, it gets to me sometimes, but I try to brush it off,” she said.

One schoolmate, identified as A.C. in court papers, said Pepper-Jackson has herself used graphic language in sexually bullying her teammates.

Asked whether she said any of what is alleged, Pepper-Jackson said, “I did not. And the school ruled that there was no evidence to prove that it was true.”

The legal fight will turn on whether the Constitution's equal protection clause or the Title IX anti-discrimination law protects transgender people.

The court ruled in 2020 that workplace discrimination against transgender people is sex discrimination, but refused to extend the logic of that decision to the case over health care for transgender minors.

The court has been deluged by dueling legal briefs from Republican- and Democratic-led states, members of Congress, athletes, doctors, scientists and scholars.

The outcome also could influence separate legal efforts seeking to bar transgender athletes in states that have continued to allow them to compete.

If Pepper-Jackson is forced to stop competing, she said she will still be able to lift weights and continue playing trumpet in the school concert and jazz bands.

“It will hurt a lot, and I know it will, but that’s what I’ll have to do,” she said.

Heather Jackson, left, and Becky Pepper-Jackson pose for a photograph outside of the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, Sunday, Jan. 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)

Heather Jackson, left, and Becky Pepper-Jackson pose for a photograph outside of the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, Sunday, Jan. 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)

Becky Pepper-Jackson poses for a photograph outside of the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, Sunday, Jan. 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)

The Supreme Court stands is Washington, Friday, Jan. 9, 2026. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

FILE - Protestors hold signs during a rally at the state capitol in Charleston, W.Va., on March 9, 2023. (AP Photo/Chris Jackson, file)