A win for Britain would have been one of the biggest upsets in history, and it was evident early on that they were not going to be able to compete with the French side, although they had moments where they had the visitors rattled.

 

Jesper Holmris, Britain's head coach, said: "I would have liked it to be a little bit closer, I would have liked it to be 35-16.

 

"They were too good, especially the physique of France.

 

"It was a good experience; we are playing one of the best teams in the world."

 

With a partisan support in South East London, Britain took to the court to face a team that are household names in the world of handball and it took the visitors only 22 seconds to open the scoring through winger Siraba Dembele (pictured).

 

However, Britain were not to be outdone as they restricted France to just one goal in the next four minutes with Jeanette Andersen opening the scoring for the home side on 4min 15sec after good work from Lyn Byl.

 

France then scored four unanswered goals which suggested what may come later but Britt Goodwin, top scorer in that first European qualifier on Wednesday in Austria, settled Britain's nerves hitting the back of the net when it seemed like there was nothing on.

 

But France showed their class, storming back with a further five unanswered goals as they started to live up to their star-billing.

 

Britain struggled to settle and found themselves 2-11 down but quickly showed the fighting spirit that had got them this far as they started to exchange goals with their opposition first from Kathryn Fudge with two from Zoe Van der Weel and a well-engineered goal from Victoria Jukes.

 

The aggressive, attacking play from Britain unsettled their visitors who made a number of mistakes midway through the first period, whilst finding it hard to beat home goalkeeper Sarah Hargreaves who was in fine form, even saving a penalty and intercepting a French fast-break on the halfway line, which got the home crowd off of their seats.

 

At 7-16 down and with five minutes of the half remaining Holmris called a time-out for his team, with Fudge scoring soon after the re-start.

 

However, just a few seconds later, the influential Byl was hit by another two minute suspension for her constant aggressive play, but the French could not capitalise as they only outscored Britain 2-1 in this period thanks to a Lynn McCafferty strike following good work by Nina Heglund, but with French players Camille Ayglon and Dembele scoring which would be a familiar story throughout the rest of the match.

 

The second half saw Britain take over four minutes to register their first strike through Kelsi Fairbrother (pictured), but France had already stamped their authority on the game having opened up a 13-goal lead by this point.

 

Worse was to come for Britain as Byl was shown a red card, following her third two-minute suspension in the 38th minute and with their aggressive play costing them further, they found themselves down to just four outfield players when Fairbrother was given a two minute penalty.

 

France started to call on their strength in depth as Nina Morel’s introduction opened up the game further as Britain could not find a way past the strong French defence.

 

Despite a further five goals in the half from Britt Goodwin, Britain could only manage to keep the deficit at 20 goals and in the last few minutes, France opened up their advantage further, finally winning by a margin of 26.

 

Holmris said: "We were quite pleased with the first half.

 

"We did well, especially with the last twenty minutes we were competing very well when we were playing 6v6; of course they were scoring a lot of goals on the fast break when we make mistakes.

 

"In the second half we were running out of ideas in the second half, especially when Lyn Byl got sent off, we couldn’t hold the pressure in the defence, she is so important for us in the defence, so maybe that’s why they scored 42 goals.

 

"We’ve learnt a lot today as a squad, instead of just talking about it, we can feel it now on the body, and it gives us new motivation and inspiration to do extra hard work and that’s the good thing about playing teams like France.

 

"Of course we can’t play teams like this a lot and its good to have them once or twice a year to see what it is like to play the very best.

 

"It was awesome today in front of the home crowd again, I hope they enjoyed the game, but it’s too early for us to play teams like France."