Shatter a mans leg in retaliation for a tap on the back of the ankles. That’s fair play too.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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…..

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.

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.)

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?

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.

Maradona did it to England, Italy did it to Australia (dived, not hand ball) just a mention a couple of obvious ones.

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…