French Top 8: Montpellier v Lille in the final.

Action from Lille v BSORF (La Voix du Nord/STÉPHANE MORTAGNE)

Montpellier’s journey to the final was relatively untroubled. After their 22-0 win in Toulouse last weekend, they were never seriously troubled, going into the break 26-0 up. Toulouse finally crossed the line in the dying moments of the game, but overall it was Montpellier who strolled to the final with a two-leg score of 53-7.

Lille, however, had a far tougher battle. 14 points down after the first leg against Blagnac St Orens, the margin grew to 21 within five minutes of the kickoff as BSORF’s pack drove over for the first try.

Lille pulled a try back, but the visitors retain their lead until just before halftime when a try from Lille full back Lalli finally put last year’s runners up ahead on the day, if not yet overall. At half time the score was 15-10 to Lille, which still gave BSORF a nine-point cushion.

From the restart the game changed. Lille grabbed the game and started to use their superiority up front to take command.  The game was now entirely at BSORF’s end and after 10 minutes Rivoalen took advantage of a quickly taken penalty to reduce the deficit to just four points.

It was all one-way now, and 10 minutes later Romane Menager scored the cricual try to put Lille ahead on aggregate for the first time, before Chloe Pelle rounded things off in the final minute giving Lille a 34-10 win, 59-37 overall.

"There was little to choose in the first half, then let we let go,” Eric Carrière, one of the coaches of BSORF said. “I do not know what happened, but we lost in the scrums, it were no longer in the rucks. This score early in the second trial broke us. We were taken to the throat.. There will be no cherry on the cake with this final, but we still achieved our objectives and had a great season. "