Gutted Matthieu Jalibert says South Africa fed off the referee's whistle

Devastated Matthieu Jalibert admitted France’s World Cup elimination on home soil was “hard to accept”.

Les Bleus went into the tournament with high hopes of winning it for the first time, having established themselves as one of the world’s top sides in the years leading up to it.

The fact they had not lost for two and a half years on French soil further added to the belief that this might finally be their year.

But they were left disconsolate at full-time on Sunday evening after South Africa edged a thrilling contest 29-28 to end Les Bleus’ 18-match winning run at home and kill off their dreams of glory.

“Every time we play at home, we have incredible support,” said stand-off Jalibert.

“What makes us even sadder is that we weren’t able to make them proud, to make them happy. For this group, it’s a lot of disappointment.

“We could try to find something positive by saying that we have a lot of young players, a fine generation.

“But the reality is that we failed to get out of the quarter-finals of a home World Cup. That’s going to be hard to accept.”

Jalibert offered praise to South Africa for the way they dug out victory from a pulsating Stade de France encounter that could easily have gone either way.

“It’s hard to know what to say,” he said.

“It was a fine game of rugby between two fine teams who gave it their all.

“There were moments when we could have scored in the second half and taken the lead.

“South Africa should also be congratulated for resisting our attacks and scoring when they had the chance.

“We’re disappointed and frustrated. When you see the atmosphere, the support from all our supporters, we’re disappointed.

“We were in good shape physically, we managed to set up a fast-moving game, we had quite a lot of space but we weren’t able to capitalise. We made a lot of little mistakes, we were probably too hasty in trying to go too fast.

“They stuck to their plan, scoring three tries on the counter-attack in the first half, playing a lot of pressure games and feeding off our mistakes and the referee’s whistle to score at the right moment and with success.”