Noves Relieved To Reach Final

"Our first 25 minutes were catastrophic," the long-serving coach said. "We had the wind at our backs, but we didn't use our kicking game at all well.

"That wouldn't have bothered me if we had played well with the ball in hand, but we made far too many handling errors - which was chiefly down to the
over-enthusiasm of the players - but we did use our replacements well.

"Isitolo Maka brought a lot of special qualities to the game, as did David Gerard. We used Frederic Michalak as much as we could, but he had to come off.

Skipper Fabien Pelous added: "I've got no preference who we play in the final - whoever wins in Dublin will be a very difficult side to beat at Twickenham."

Toulouse's Irish lock Trevor Brennan, eyeing a possible Cup final against his fellow Irishmen from Munster, said his side's bench players were the key.

"Isitolo was immense when he came on," said the former Ireland international. "Sometimes you wonder if the guys on our bench aren't better
than the guys on the field."

Biarritz captain Thomas Lievremont was shattered afterwards."You can't measure this kind of disappointment," he said.

"We lost so many lineouts or didn't win them cleanly enough, we never had the possession we wanted. We also dropped too many passes and we never had enough control of the game."