France made hard work of beating the Pacific Islanders 42-17 here on Saturday with their opponents playing most of the match with 14 men after Napoleoni Nalaga was dismissed.
The French ran in five tries, including one from man-of-the-match Cedric Heymans and one from debutant Sebastien Tillous-Bordes, who had to come on for Jean-Baptiste Elissalde when he was cynically head-tackled by Nalaga.
While Elissalde looked to be unconscious, he was capable of speaking after the match.
"It came out of the blue and I don't really remember what happened, only that it ended up with me being carried off," said Elissalde.
Heymans conceded that the French had made heavy weather of their victory.
"It took us a while to press home our player advantage but when we got that first try then that settled us down," said the Toulouse flyer.
"Like last week against Argentina (12-6 to France) we got the job done but against Australia next Saturday we will have to shape up." France coach Marc Lievremont was not happy at all with the overall performance.
"In the first-half we played like we were Fiji," he remarked caustically.
"We played like we should not have done, we lost a lot of balls. We were ill disciplined and we fell into the trap of playing 'hurray rugby' (in reference to throwing the ball around at will)."
His Pacific Islander counterpart Quddus Fielea admitted that his team's ill discipline had cost them dearly, though, he could not comment on Nalaga's incident.
"It is sure that on the level of discipline, we were not as good as we had hoped we would be, but that does happen sometimes in rugby."
The opening minutes were a cagey affair with the Pacific Islanders initially taking a 3-0 lead through a Seremaia Bai penalty, which was then levelled by David Skrela but the three point gap was restored by Bai in the 10th minute.
However, the balance of the match tipped the hosts way 18 minutes into the first-half when Nalaga was justifiably red-carded by referee Nigel Owens for a gratuitous head high tackle on France scrum-half Jean-Baptiste Elissalde - who had to be stretchered off.
It took the French a good 10 minutes to register their one man advantage before a good lay-off by Julien Malzieu set up Dimitri Szarzewski who touched down under the posts and Skrela duly converted.
The French grabbed a second try soon afterwards, though, it had a touch of fortune about it as France captain Lionel Nallet obstructed an Islanders defender but Owens failed to see that and Tillous-Bordes was allowed free rein to run in and score his maiden try for his country.
Bai, though, kept the Pacific Islanders within reach when he landed a penalty in time added on to leave the score at 17-12 at the break.
The French started the second-half brightly and extended their lead as Heymans touched down to make it 22-12 and then two Skrela penalties ensured some much needed breathing space for the hosts.
While the Islanders went close to scoring a try on a couple of occasions it was the French that managed to convert their opportunity with Picamoles touching down and Skrela converting.
Outstanding Toulouse fullback Maxime Medard then touched down before the Islanders got a deserved try two minutes from the end by Tongan Epeli Taione.
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