France V Ireland - Wednesday, 18th November 2009 - World Cup 2010 Playoff Second Leg

[irishbaz]

My children seen me cry like a baby for the first time ever Firstly out of disgust for Henrys lack of class (while it means nothing to the man to have a nation despise him for his lack of integrity) but secondly out of pure pride we were class tonight lads and no matter what I’m so proud to be Irish!! My kids are all born in England and my eldest daughter said dad now you can support England!! I have put her in an orphanage!!

[ball-hop]

Eduardo was banned for 3 games for trying to gain an unfair advantage. What price a similar decision, highly unlikely I feel.
Eduardo.... Croatia
Henry ... Platini, Blatter (Swiss, I know but...), UEFA, FIFA, Barcelona and France - a ban - Flying Pigs anyone?

Enke comment totally uncalled for, bang out of order.

[Thunderblaster]

FIFA has their own forum. Sign up and really voice your views on the game!!

[Acornvilla]

i don't know what to say :confused: we did'nt deserve to g out like that? why has my entire life supporting ireland been like this!! all you older people are so lucky because you have memories i may never get the same chance to have :(

[Jon'o]

And if an Irish player had handballed in exactly the same way, or dived and earned a penalty, would we be condemning them at the moment? No, we'd accept it was wrong, and that the player deserved criticism, but the player would have just gotten us to the World Cup, so we really wouldn't be all that bothered. And if England had been eliminated in the way we just were, we'd be over the moon.

Someone on Sky sports phone in just made the exact same point, and you and he are right just hurts right now. In the cold light of day it was a great performance but past results, not seeding the draw and making more of chances would have made this whole thing a non issue.

Sulk, moan, get drunk but we're getting a new stadium next year and its a new start, we'll bounce back and back our lads 110% as we always do. :ball:

[rambler14]

It's nice to see all the English fans ringing into Your on Sky Sports saying that Ireland were cheated out of the World Cup!

[MysticMon]

http://photos-g.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-snc3/hs095.snc3/16236_1248865112158_1545364701_30674809_8239249_t. jpg (http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=30674809&o=all&op=1&view=all&subj=215531572576&aid=-1&id=1545364701&oid=215531572576)

[Acornvilla]

i think i want souness as manager! when trap retires that is. he always makes sencd and has quite a goot record as a manager

[TonyD]

Just a quick question. How many times did Robbie Keane handle the ball tonight ? If he'd gotten away with one of those and it led to a goal would there be any moralising and talk of cheating going on here ? Don't think so. Are we really going to go all "Hand of God" on this and still be talking about it in 20 odd years time ?

[carloz]

i think i want souness as manager! when trap retires that is. he always makes sencd and has quite a goot record as a manager

Saying we should go rooting through every level of football in england to find any player with a drop of irish blood.Call up Kevin bloody Nolan!!!!! I think id leave him in the studio with the others to have their Andy Reid wankfest

[Park_Lane]

Just a quick question. How many times did Robbie Keane handle the ball tonight ? If he'd gotten away with one of those and it led to a goal would there be any moralising and talk of cheating going on here ?

This didnt happen so it irrelevant.

[Iano]

everyone should e-mail Henry's sponsors and threaten not to buy their products because of what he represents, Gillette and Reebok for starters

[Murfinator]

Henry had his back to the ref, it was all the linesman fault.

[zackmorris]

Surprisingly no mention of the handball in the fifa match summary on their site. I think football 365 best summed it up on their site.

[Park_Lane]

i think i want souness as manager! when trap retires that is. he always makes sencd and has quite a goot record as a manager


no thanks, its bad enough having to put up with his "punditry"

[Park_Lane]

Surprisingly no mention of the handball in the fifa match summary on their site. I think football 365 best summed it up on their site.

Of course they dont. Sepp Blatter and Michel Platini have the biggest hard ons now they dont want little 'ol Ireland raining on their parade.

[old git]

Typical Keane does something good then turns around and does something stupid. His stupid decision to take it around the keeper when he had the time to shoot or lift it over the keeper was the real reason Ireland are out of the WC Finals. It gave the french renewed confidence and they controlled the game ater that and the Irish team were gutted after it even though they still played out of their skins. Robbie Keane is NOT a top striker as Liverpool found out last year,he may score the odd goal or two but he will miss the most important ones due to his stupid decisions and attempts at glory. When he was most needed tonight he failed. I know he works hard but his inital job is to put them away especially at crucial times of the match. Kudos for his goal but when it mattered most he bottled it.

i'm not keanes biggest fan either and don't think he is a world class finisher .. but would no way blame him for ireland not winning tonight and going to world cup .. doyle missed a great headed chance / duff missed when through on goals all equally good chances as keanes .. and don't forget his goals along the way got us so close to getting to a world cup final :ball:

[Hibs4Ever]

Someone on Sky sports phone in just made the exact same point, and you and he are right


If Keane had done that I'd be emabarrassed and expected him to get a ban

[gally]

Givens.......8
O'Shea......9
Dunne.......9
St Ledger ..9.5
Kilbane......9
Lawrence...9
Whelan......8
Andrews....8
Duff..........9
Keane.......9
Doyle........9

Subs
Gibson.......8
McShane....8
McGeady....7.5
I have never been so proud of a performance in the last 40 years......

[ball-hop]

Saw interview with Trappatoni on RTE - he referred to the decisions which went against Italy in South Korea.... Was his resignation from the Italian job linked to poor refereeing decisions in that match? He seemed right p'ed off and was definitely afraid to make too much comment, as was Tardelli.
Doyle and Zinedine were also very careful in their interviews, though Zinedine did say that Henry didn't apologise or freely admit to having handled the ball.
As someone said earlier.... now we know how England felt in 1986 - amazing 23 years on and football hasn't discovered a means of eliminating this blatant obvious form of "taking advantage of a situation"

[Only1Rovers]

....hand of frog....

[Den Perry]

Henry is cheating scum

I hope he gets sent off unjustly in world cup semi-final and misses the final

[Jon'o]

....hand of frog....

:D first thing to make me smile tonight !

[Hibs4Ever]

I hope he gets sent off unjustly in world cup semi-final and misses the final


Are you kidding? That french team won't even get out of the group stages

[TonyD]

That Enke comment is cowardly. DodgyCanadian should be banned for life.

Totally agree. As someone who suffered from a suicide of a close family member last year that comment is far more disgusting than any act of foul play on a bloody football pitch. I appreciate people take the game seriously, but for Chrissakes, cop the fook on.

[backstothewall]

None of this changes anything. We're out. And we have to move one.

We were robbed, by a player no one would ever have thought would have done it. But we all need to move on. No one will change it. France go to the World Cup. We have to move on to the thread about the Euro's, and supporting whoever those cheating f*cks get in the World Cup. I don't care if its England. F*ck the French.

Lets get the Euro thread going. Lets hope we get the French.

[Park_Lane]

Typical Keane does something good then turns around and does something stupid. His stupid decision to take it around the keeper when he had the time to shoot or lift it over the keeper was the real reason Ireland are out of the WC Finals. It gave the french renewed confidence and they controlled the game ater that and the Irish team were gutted after it even though they still played out of their skins. Robbie Keane is NOT a top striker as Liverpool found out last year,he may score the odd goal or two but he will miss the most important ones due to his stupid decisions and attempts at glory. When he was most needed tonight he failed. I know he works hard but his inital job is to put them away especially at crucial times of the match. Kudos for his goal but when it mattered most he bottled it.


Of course only Top Top players make tha grade at liverpool. Which explains their current predicament. You need to go back to school mate. Idiotic post.
Keane is a top striker. How many goals in how many internationals? Oh and by the way who was our top scorer this campaign?

[Metrostars]

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/20407/24exhy8.gif

[Schumi]

Well i thought i'd never say this, but if England play France at the world cup, it will be the first time i ever hoped England won.You say that now but if that game happens, I'll be hoping Henry does the same to them.

Of course only Top Top players make tha grade at liverpool. Which explains their current predicament. You need to go back to school mate. Idiotic post.
Keane is a top striker. How many goals in how many internationals? Oh and by the way who was our top scorer this campaign?

And scored tonight too. :rolleyes:

[Park_Lane]

Totally agree. As someone who suffered from a suicide of a close family member last year that comment is far more disagusting than any act of foul play on a bloody football pitch. I appreciate people take the game seriously, but for Chrissakes, cop the fook on.

I think he has realised that lads, he edited the post and apologised.

[The General]

the stakes are too high for this crap to happen..

[Emmet7]

Henry is a cheat. A talented footballer but now also a flawed footballer who dives, simulates, looks for penalties that aren't there. He personifies the win at all costs attitude, an ugly attitude that permeates the top level of every sport.

We really shouldn't have expected less.

Evra tried to cheat in Croker with the worst attempt to decieve a referee I have ever seen. Anelka also tried it tonight by diving in the box.

Bunch of cheats.

First cheated by FIFA with the seedings, now cheated again by Thierry Henry.

A victory for cheats everywhere and a licence to cheat to win matches.

[Thunderblaster]

Totally agree. As someone who suffered from a suicide of a close family member last year that comment is far more disagusting than any act of foul play on a bloody football pitch. I appreciate people take the game seriously, but for Chrissakes, cop the fook on.

Agree. No need for death threats against Henry. There are enough civilised ways to punish him besides that.

[rambler14]

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/20407/24exhy8.gif

blatant :mad:

Hang your head Thierry and if you wont i'll gladly hang it for ya!:mad:

[tricky_colour]

From wikipedia "His footballing style and personality have ensured that he is one of the most commercially marketable footballers in the world, he has been featured in advertisements for Nike, Reebok, Renault, Pepsi and Gillette."

Well I hope a few of his sponsers from him now, although I doubt he will starve because of that somehow.

[Kildare Lad]

Just going to throw my opinion in here, didn't read all of the thread so dont know what has been said already.

After watching the match tonight I can safely say I am proud to be Irish, they gave it everything tonight out there on the pitch - genuinly I could not have asked for any more effort from each of those players. The fans sounded fantastic too on the telly, looks like a big group made their way over to support the lads, so fair play to them also. But our lads played with their hearts on their sleeves, gave it 100% till the very end, played above my expectations anyway, also we played fair. A true Irish performance in my eyes. Despite us not progressing, there are plenty of positives to take from that performance, none more so than the fact we wanted it so badly and down to that alone we matched (even bettered) the French tonight, a country with a list as long as my arm full of top class players.
So fair play boys.

On the Henry handball, obviously no Irish person can be happy about it and I'm no different. But I am not going to hold it against Henry, at the end of the day though he is his national sides captain, anyone who has played sport before I'm sure has said to themselves before a big match "I would do anything to win tonight", and I doubt Henry is any different, only difference being he actually did do that "anything" with his handball. Im not for cheating by any means, I fully believe every game should be played in fair play, but when it comes down to such a big game with such a big prize for winning, it does come to the stage where anything should be done to win, I know I for one would have done the same given the chance and a lot of other people probably would too.

[cestlavie]

Gutted but very proud of the boys. The first touch by Henry, you could almost understand as it is an instinctive thing to do but the second was pure criminal. Here's to the future, The boys in green are back. All we need to do now is build a stronger panel. We need to believe in ourselves more. We should be in South Africa, and perhaps if we had of went for it more in Montenegro+Bulgaria and wee bit more luck here and there, we would be, Cestlavie! Bring on the Euro's

[Morbo]

And if an Irish player had handballed in exactly the same way, or dived and earned a penalty, would we be condemning them at the moment? No, we'd accept it was wrong, and that the player deserved criticism, but the player just got us to the World Cup, so we really wouldn't be all that bothered.

Call me cynical but there is not a snowballs chance in hell that that we would have gotten that decision against France.



That Enke comment is cowardly. DodgyCanadian should be banned for life.
It was bad taste but understandable giving the circumstances, calling for a life ban is a tad bit ott.

[jebus]

Football is a cheating game lads, Keane tried deliberate handballs a couple of times in that match alone. We also laugh at the Hand of God cause it happened to England, Liverpool fans don't care that Gerrard dives, United fans didn't about Ronaldo, christ if Jason Hughes and Stephen O'Flynn did what Henry and Gallas did tonight to get Limerick FC promoted I'd dance a jig.

Summary: Get over it

[jebus]

Football is a cheating game lads, Keane tried deliberate handballs a couple of times in that match alone. We also laugh at the Hand of God cause it happened to England, Liverpool fans don't care that Gerrard dives, United fans didn't about Ronaldo, christ if Jason Hughes and Stephen O'Flynn did what Henry and Gallas did tonight to get Limerick FC promoted I'd dance a jig.

Also all this 'I thought Henry was a gentlemen' people must have missed his diving against Spain (last Euros or World Cup, think it was World Cup) and a few of his tumbles for Barcelona and Arsenal

[Park_Lane]

Football is a cheating game lads, Keane tried deliberate handballs a couple of times in that match alone. We also laugh at the Hand of God cause it happened to England, Liverpool fans don't care that Gerrard dives, United fans didn't about Ronaldo, christ if Jason Hughes and Stephen O'Flynn did what Henry and Gallas did tonight to get Limerick FC promoted I'd dance a jig.

Summary: Get over it

With respect Jebus, its hard to get over being done out of a world cup place. Limerick can always get promoted next year, world cup only comes around every 4 years.
But I take you point that football is now a cheating game, its never hit home more than tonight and I for one am getting sick of it.

[drummerboy]

Agreed a brilliant performance. So gutted for them.

[LFC in Exile]

There is so much sanctimonuous bullsh1t on here.

Get over it - cheating is part of the game. You can't choose which cheating you accept and which you don't. Earlier in the game Henry called for a throw that was not his - it did not come off O'Shea as he claimed. That was cheating. Every player in every junior league in the country has done the same.

It is up to the officials to see things - it is not up to Henry to ref the game. Chance your arm (literally) and you might get away with it. From a French perspective it would have been criminal for him NOT to try it.

We were brilliant. We did not deserve to lose. But footall is not a game for fair - it is a game for doing what you have to do.

FIFA could fix the problem of diving and other cheating in two weeks if they wanted to - but they don't have the balls and football managers are happy to live with double standards. A retrospective ban would have a big effect...

In the event lets not lose the run of ourselves - after all we did not bitch and moan when we got a penalty that wasn't against Georgia. That's life. That's football.

[bennocelt]

I agree with Souness - it was a natural reaction and most players would have done the same - sure Doyle admitted as much in his interview.
The person who should be held to account is def the linesman - the ref was unsighted, and he had a cracking game
Ireland deserve to be in SA but then a team has to take its chances too

[jebus]

I'd honestly take Limerick getting promoted over Ireland getting to the World Cup any day of the week

I'd blame the linesman for that. You even saw it with the players afterwards where neither Doyle or Kilbane said they'd blame Henry, they'd blame the linesman.

Kilbane rightly said that it happens in football and Henry probably couldn't believe he got away with it

Doyle said they all do it and it happens in a flash so he wouldn't blame Henry

It happens, it's sickening that what was probably the best Irish performance since Holland, and arguably since Italia 90 (most pride for me anyway) ended with us going out to a goal like that, but that's football, happens all the time

[Park_Lane]

I agree with Souness - it was a natural reaction and most players would have done the same - sure Doyle admitted as much in his interview.
The person who should be held to account is def the linesman - the ref was unsighted, and he had a cracking game
Ireland deserve to be in SA but then a team has to take its chances too


How is it natural to guide the ball with your hand into the direction of your foot?

[Park_Lane]

Kilbane rightly said that it happens in football and Henry probably couldn't believe he got away with it

Doyle said they all do it and it happens in a flash so he wouldn't blame Henry


tbh thats just media spin, they do not want to be percived to be blaming a fellow professional. Oh to be a fly on the irish dressing room wall to hear what was said....

[LFC in Exile]

How is it natural to guide the ball with your hand into the direction of your foot?

I would have done what Henry did. It is natural to seek to push the rules. At that stage of the game what are the odds? Get caught - take your yellow and big deal. Get away with it and your in the World Cup finals. I know what I'd do.

[jebus]

tbh thats just media spin, they do not want to be percived to be blaming a fellow professional. Oh to be a fly on the irish dressing room wall to hear what was said....

I'd say they didn't want to be shown up as hypocrites because I'm sure I could pick out games that both have played in where their team has benefited from dubious decisions and they danced around the place after the goal

[LFC in Exile]

tbh thats just media spin, they do not want to be percived to be blaming a fellow professional. Oh to be a fly on the irish dressing room wall to hear what was said....

It's hardly a mystery. They called him a cheating French c**t. But he's a cheating French c**t going to South Africa.