By s. portsfan -
November 22nd 2009 @ 12:03am
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An open letter to Thierry Henry
Dear Thierry, I’m terribly sorry I had to do this through a letter, this is not easy for me at all, honestly. The way you behaved the other night has pushed me past a point of no return. Why did you do what you did?
I know that sometimes things happen in the heat of the moment. Mistakes are made. That tiny fraction of a second of error in judgement is going to cost you immeasurably.
If you had spoken up straight away and apologized I could have forgiven you. If you had taken the immediate opportunity to admit your fault we could have got past this. But that opportunity ended when I saw you hugging/kissing William Gallas. To wait until the end of the evening to own up was gutless and you have lost my respect. What is the good of admitting your responsibility when it is too late to take it back?
But that’s life; sometimes it isn’t fair – I’ll get over it.
I guess it’s been a slow, naive realization on my part that something like this was bound to happen sooner or later. You work in a “win at all costs” culture. Sport is not sport anymore, it’s merely entertainment; something to fill the gaps between the advertisements. The players are brands and have a responsibility to their sponsors – I’d love to see them publicly chastise you.
Over the past few years you and your mates have been getting too big for your expensive-to-buy, mass-sweatshop-produced boots. Who pays you this money? Well I do, or at least some of it is mine. So, from now on I choose not to. I will not go see you play, or buy the products you promote, or buy your latest team shirt with your name on the back. I choose not to buy the magazines with articles about you. I can surf in the other direction on the internet. My kids will not wear your brand of boots.
At the end of the day, it’s our money that you live off – the spectators and fans. Maybe I’ll stop spending money on the sports that allow this sort of behavior to continue. Maybe it’ll just be me, maybe others will do the same. Maybe, and this is a massive maybe, the controlling bodies of sports will start to see enough of a shift in public opinion that will compel them to enforce their games’ participants to play fair.
Yes, you create glorious viewing entertainment, but what about spirit of the game? Professional sport has become so full of ungentlemanly conduct, diving, feigning injury, harassing the officials that we as spectators have become numb to it.
I applaud cricketers who walk when they know they have nicked the ball. I have the utmost respect for the player who accepts an officials’ decision even if they disagree. I marvel at the gutsy player who stays on their feet battling for the ball when it would be easier to hit the turf and appeal for a free kick.
I am in favour of video evidence being used after a match, and believe it would help penalize those that choose to cheat. Players caught can be heavily fined and serve bans. Show the next generation what is expected of them. Just as a player is lauded for making the choice to step one way, before timing his connection with the ball to guide it into the net, so to a player makes a conscious choice to cheat or stray outside the spirit of the game.
So in summary, there’s nothing you can do to change my mind. I can’t change your attitude, and have finally given up. Life is too short. All I can do is change myself. I hope our paths don’t cross. It’s best we make a clean break, so please don’t try to contact me at all.
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(27)
vas said | November 22nd 2009 @ 12:50am | Report comment
Get your hand off it mate. Henry’s alternative was to fess up, have the goal disallowed, and then have his actions branded “noble idiocy” if Ireland were to progress.
As I wrote in my piece, what is Henry’s higher priority? Being the moral victor or on the pitch? He’s in a results-business (like everything else). If people are so concerned about imposing moral standards every time they see something they don’t like, then stop watching sport. Sport itself is a celebration of human strength and weakness rolled into one.
Henry will have this blackmarked against him for the rest of his career, but it’s his problem to ponder, not ours to continually obsess about…
Nick said | November 22nd 2009 @ 9:20pm | Report comment
Vas…your comment shows the typical ME generation attitude. All is fair so long as it doesn’t happen to me. Life is not only about who wins or who makes the most money friend. It’s also about doing the right thing in sport, in business and in politics.
People who don’t may get away with things but eventually their attitude catches them out in the long term.
Let’s all teach kids to cheat at sport, at work and to go out only for themselves. That’s the way right ?
Henry deliberately cheated by redirecting the ball twice. FIFA condones this as Blatter changed the rules for seeding the world cup playoffs so that he could protect the big name teams. Watch the PANORAMA show about Blatter and you will see why the guy is who he is. Anyway, you go on condoning cheats and then when you get ripped off at work or by a CEO who runs a company you have shares in…..don’t complain! Sure.
ABCDEFG said | November 22nd 2009 @ 2:30am | Report comment
I don’t blame Henry, I blame FIFA.
BigAl said | November 22nd 2009 @ 5:15pm | Report comment
FIFA ? – what about the ref. , whose job it is to pickup these sort of things !
matt0931 said | November 22nd 2009 @ 2:38am | Report comment
Soccer is full of cheats. I don’t know why people are getting so carried away with this when cheating in soccer has been going on for years.
Maradona did it to England, Italy did it to Australia (dived, not hand ball) just a mention a couple of obvious ones.
Freud of Football said | November 22nd 2009 @ 4:20am | Report comment
Enough with these “open letters”. Surely it can’t be that hard to formulate an article that everyone needs to resort to “open letters”?
Further, the views are very very insular. The ball struck his hand, it wasn’t hand to ball so to lambast him is ridiculous. “That tiny fraction of a second of error in judgement” – He wouldn’t have even known that the ball was going to hit his hand, further, how many times has Henry played in games where there were obvious handballs by the opposition that weren’t picked up or awarded by the referee in which he lost?
I’ll bet the answer is more than 1.
Joe FC said | November 22nd 2009 @ 9:56am | Report comment
It was ‘hand to ball”.
Nick said | November 22nd 2009 @ 9:22pm | Report comment
Watch the video. He handled the ball twice ! His own coach from Arsenal as well as commentators in france who have played with the guy have all admitted that. There is a difference between an accidental unintentional handball and a deliberate cheating act. It’s like greasing a cricket ball or moving your ball in golf when no-one is watching.
Robbos said | November 22nd 2009 @ 4:56am | Report comment
Roy Keane may be bitter, but he did may sense, get over it, this happens all the time, dubious decisions in sport.
This is very sad for the Irish, but hey it’s life.
pothale said | November 22nd 2009 @ 5:40am | Report comment
Freud – have you watched the incident? The ball hits his wrist area and Henry then moves his hand to flick/palm it the way he wants it to go a second time. It was hand to ball.
Freud of Football said | November 22nd 2009 @ 6:12am | Report comment
Pothale, I saw the incident live and probably 15 times since then, for mine it was ball-to-hand initially, the second contact I’m not so sure about.
However, he was running to the back post, the ball came in from deep and he was always running away from the ball, that the ball made it through to him in the first place is poor defending by the Irish, I doubt Henry was “expecting” the ball to reach him (he looked quite surprised when he got it), he was there as a contigency so the ball didn’t go out (watch any game, you’ll see many teams use this for deep free kicks), he didn’t have time to hand ball it where he wanted it to go, the second touch well that looks quite deliberate but it was already dropping, why would he touch it again?
Why don’t you blame the crap defending or the even worse positioning of the referee? What was he going to see standing where he was?
pothale said | November 22nd 2009 @ 6:35am | Report comment
The crap defending is irrelevant (despite it being rightly raised by Keane R).
I’m firmly of the view that the ball was prevented from going out of play by Henry’s hand, and that he additionally hit it to change its course of movement. That is evident from the replays I’ve seen. And is the view of pretty much everyone who has written about it. Indeed some see Henry’s reluctance to admit that he actively hit the ball the second time as making weasel words of his ‘apology’ and acknowledgement that there should be a replay (which I do not agree with – to do so lets FIFA off the hook from taking more permanent action about oversight of the game overall.)
Freud of Football said | November 22nd 2009 @ 6:39am | Report comment
I don’t think the first touch was deliberate, watch it in real-time, he didn’t have time to think, he didn’t know the ball was going to reach him until it was 2-3 metres away, the second touch yes but for mine it’s harsh to say that the first touch was deliberate.
pothale said | November 22nd 2009 @ 6:53am | Report comment
I agree with you. The first was likely accidental. A player’s instinctive reaction when this happens is to pull their hands away in the classic ‘it didn’t hit me’ parody you get from players.
It’s the second touch that people have largely focussed on, and that Henry has avoided admitting to – because it displays intent on his part as opposed to the wide-eyed ‘just an accident, guv, appeal.
Freud of Football said | November 22nd 2009 @ 7:00am | Report comment
Did you edit your comment there Pothale or were you censored?
sheek said | November 22nd 2009 @ 7:15am | Report comment
Why are we all so upset?
Sportsmen cheat since the ends justify the means. Not to mention the rewards.
Administrators lack backbone & moral fibre because usually they’ve already traded their soul climbing to their positions of power.
The fans-the people-us are usually apathetic unless it affects us personally. If we want to blame somebody, blame us-society because we allow, by doing nothing about it, for athletes to cheat, & authorities to turn a blind eye.
Cynical but realistic…..
Fisher Price said | November 22nd 2009 @ 7:52am | Report comment
You’ve added to this insane witch-hunt. It seems Henry is the first player to cheat in a big game but you see plenty more examples of it happening – be it diving or deliberate handballs or fouling – every week. We can’t have a club or national association (let alone a Government with skewed priorities) calling for a ban every time an on-field injustice has occured.
midfield general said | November 22nd 2009 @ 10:52am | Report comment
Agreed. A bit hypocritical for anyone invlolved in football to start calling him a cheat. It happens everyday in every country, from claiming throw-ins or corners when you know you had the last touch, to numerous incidents of simulation. Queensland Roar had a perfectly good goal disallowed last night when the young Victory keeper fell in a heap allegedly struck in a face but replay showed no contact.
Dublin Dave said | November 22nd 2009 @ 11:06am | Report comment
Pothale,
Please tell me you were not in that gang of muppets marching to the French embassy today to demand a replay. This is getting out of hand.
Henry’s action was a travesty, a lousy way to negate a stirring Irish performance, perhaps the best of Trappatoni’s reign. We have a right to be pissed off. But we have a duty to know the limits of expectation. There ain’t going to be a replay. There was never any chance of one. Maybe, just maybe, it will bring in some form of recourse to video appeals. But that will be for the good of the game, not of this Irish team.
Keano was right. For once. Let’s just get over it.
pothale said | November 22nd 2009 @ 11:49am | Report comment
Dave I most certainly wasn’t. I was in London trying to get a ticket for the Eng v NZ match, and when that didn’t work out, came home and sat getting very wet in the RDS. Marching to embassy might have kept me warmer though.
I’ve no interest in a replay. As I said a couple of posts earlier, it would only allow FIFA to put off actually doing something for the longer-term.
I said the day after we should move on. The only bit I got worked up about is the insistence that Henry’s behaviour was somehow ok cos everyone else was doing it or it was an accidental ball to hand or he didn’t cheat really, or it was the ref’s fault or some other mealy mouthed excuse.
Just call a spade a spade – he cheated. And he’s crap at apologising.
Scored some good goals though.
Crazy Dave said | November 22nd 2009 @ 12:55pm | Report comment
What I don’t get with Henry, was that he said it was an instinctive reaction…. um… how long has he been playing the game for? Hasn’t he been told since he was knee high to a grasshopper to keep his hands away from the ball? And this is the first time he has committed this offence…. so how was it an instinctive reaction? He cheated. He knew what he was doing, and only apologised cause he got caught.
Art Sapphire said | November 22nd 2009 @ 7:03pm | Report comment
The Wisdom of Roy Keane – unedited. Great Stuff.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8fXh7VpObbg
Check it out when a reporter’s phone goes off halfway thru the interview.
Finally, can this please be the last sooky sooky la la piece n the whole episode.
Be like Keano and grow some cajones
Dublin Dave said | November 23rd 2009 @ 4:29am | Report comment
You want cajones, or even cojones?
Look no further than the journalist who replies to Keane’s invitation to switch his phone off with the answer. “Nah. I’ll just let it ring out”
Now that’s the sort of guy you want in your special forces.
HUGE respeck.
cab711 said | November 23rd 2009 @ 5:34am | Report comment
Pfft…that wasnt a hand ball.
pothale said | November 23rd 2009 @ 5:44am | Report comment
That’s the worst piece of kerb crawling in this thread.
cab711 said | November 23rd 2009 @ 4:36pm | Report comment
Hehe just stirring
jimbo said | November 23rd 2009 @ 12:35pm | Report comment
Typical Roy Keane philosophy and another chance to have a go at the Irish FA who he walked away from during a World Cup campaign.
Shatter a mans leg in retaliation for a tap on the back of the ankles. That’s fair play too.