Wales will be playing for third place rather than the Webb Ellis Cup after losing to France in a low-scoring semi-final, but they returned to their hotel convinced their captain, Sam Warburton, was harshly sent off after 17 minutes for a dangerous tackle.

Wales had to play for 63 minutes with 14 men after Warburton saw red for dropping the wing Vincent Clerc to the ground, but they scored the only try of the match through the scrum-half Mike Phillips and had the chance to go ahead near the end of the match only for Leigh Halfpenny's 49-metre penalty to dip under the bar.

"We are a very good team and deserve to be in the final without a shadow of doubt," said Phillips, who will join Bayonne at the end of the tournament. "France were poor and they are going to get blown away in the final. We had a real chance of reaching the final and the decision to send off Sam was wrong.

"He is a young kid captaining his country in a semi-final of the World Cup. He is not a dirty player, but a big hitter and what he did was only worth a yellow card. It looked much worse than it was and France played on it with their showmanship.

"It was early on in a massive game. The players were flying into each other and big hits were going in. People go up in the air, that is the way it is. We battled on and tried so hard to get into the final. The French didn't do anything constructive and they just looked for penalties."

Warburton became the seventh Welsh player to be sent off in an international and the second in the World Cup after the second row Huw Richards was dismissed for foul play in the 1987 semi-final against New Zealand.

"Sam did not drive Clerc into the ground and I was surprised that an experienced referee like Alain Rolland did not consult his two touch judges before reaching his decision," Warren Gatland, the Wales coach, said. "We had the chance of making the final taken away by the red card. It ruined the game.

"I think it was the wrong decision. It has been a fantastic tournament, but unfortunately one or two referees have been a bit inconsistent. We have to take it on the chin and it is no disrespect to France because it was not their players who made the decision."

Warburton said the tackle was not malicious: "I felt as soon as I hit Clerc his bodyweight took control of what happened. I went to compete for the ball after making what I thought was a normal tackle and the next thing I know I was walking off to the stand."

Clerc had a different take. "I was tackled at the same time I received the ball," he said. "I felt Warburton immediately lift me up and when I fell down on the floor I thought he was going to get at least a yellow card. He put my feet up to my head and since the beginning of the competition, every time it has been penalised with a card. I thought what happened to him was fair, but I feel no anger to him."

The France scrum-half Dimitri Yachvili acknowledged the debt owed by France, who equalled England and Australia in reaching their third final, to fortune. "Perhaps Wales were unlucky," he said. "We know that they maybe deserved to win, because they lost Adam Jones early to injury and then had a red card. We did not play our best rugby, but we won."

Gatland can reflect on a successful tournament. Wales were not widely backed to emerge from a pool that included South Africa, Samoa and Fiji, but they were within a metre of making next Sunday's final when Halfpenny's kick faded at the moment it looked to be going over.

"A number of the squad will be around in 2015 and the better for this experience," Gatland, who has another four years on his contract, said. "Some have emerged in the last 12 months and the future is healthy. I was really proud of the players today.

"They have taken their opportunities and developed. One benefit to the national team of the current economic climate in the northern hemisphere is that our regions do not have as much money to buy foreign players and they are developing youngsters. We are benefiting from that and we are heading in the right direction."