Played on a beautiful sunny end of afternoon in front of a cheerful crowd of local fans, the last match of the day started at a relaxed pace, with France probably confident of the end result and Portugal still feeling the effect of their hard match against Belgium the night before.

France had a wake-up call when a Portuguese attacker left alone in the circle just missed the ball in front of Matthias Dierckens in goal, and they started to play with more purpose. After a missed opportunity on penalty-corner, France opened their tally in the 15th minute… courtesy of an own goal from a Portuguese defender. France scrambled a number of penalty-corners before Matthieu Durchon, left alone in the circle, finally propelled the ball in goal.  

However, despite totally dominating the proceedings, Les Bleus were not playing with any urgency. They pushed up the pace in the final minutes of the period but, despite two balls rolling tantalizingly on the Portuguese goal line, the score was still 0-2 going into the break.

Second period was going along the same pattern, with France pilling up the missed opportunities and the crowd becoming impatient, until Lucas Sevestre slotted a good strike on a penalty-corner in the 45th minute, giving France a more reasonable 3-goal cushion.

The floodgates finally opened with ten minutes left in the match, and France pushed the score to 0-6 with goals form Lucas Sevestre (his 2nd), Arnaud Becuwe and Matthieu Durchon (also his 2nd of the match). The win keeps them in the lead pack of the competition, but they cannot be happy with the incredible number of opportunities they wasted along the way.