Tony Leen, Sports Editor
THIS Parisien palaver about Thierry Henry's helping hand may all amount to nought, but it's done wonders for the Republic of Ireland and the FAI.
Such has been the sense of wounded injustice on the airwaves, from first light yesterday, that the FAI had little option but to plough headlong into open conflict with their parent body, FIFA, yesterday. It was a ghastly 24 hours for world football's governing body, Sepp Blatter and co buried in a bureaucratic bunker, without a word on the controversy, even though everyone was weighing in with an opinion.
Whereas the fifa rulebook may be their ally in denying the Irish the rematch they crave, the real embarrassment is the sleight of hand which brought about a fundamental change to the seedings for the eight team play off. That Trapattoni chose to refer again to it yesterday at FAI headquarters in Abbotstown was important.
My information is that FIFA are not averse to the second leg of the France-Ireland play off being replayed, but they require the French football federation to first accede to Ireland's request for same. In doing this, they are employing the precedent of Arsenal's offer of a replay to Sheffield United after an FA Cup controversy when the Gunners scored a goal in ungentlemanly circumstances. The offer was taken up and the FA simply sanctioned the rematch. They didn't order it.
In calling for a rematch, the FAI has done what it had to do. Had it accepted the Republic's unfortunate fate, John Delaney would have been rightly accused of turning his back on his country. That was never going to happen; Delaney's as good a politician as he is an administrator. He's also just seen the guts of €20m large ones go west, money that would have knocked a large hole in the shortfall for their end of the Aviva Stadium tab. In a strange way, it's difficult to conceive of any other circumstance in which the FAI chief's stock would have risen so much after being knocked out of the World Cup.
Ditto his €2m a year manager, and the Republic of Ireland players, who've had a decidedly lukewarm relationship with the broad sporting public in this country over the qualifying campaign. The performance in Paris, the shirt-throwing connection with the fans, and the real sense of the little guy being denied natural justice have all conspired to bring a new dynamic to the affair. The only pity is that Ireland have to wait the guts of a year, to the first of the 2012 European qualifiers, to nourish it.
Naturally, in all this hysteria, there are convenient casualties of fact. The suggestion that Thierry Henry robbed Ireland of a place in South Africa is a stretch for starters. There were more than fifteen minutes left for either side to avoid the dreaded drama of penalties, a climax for which Ireland appeared to have an underwhelming choice of kickers.
Also, the Republic could and should have been out of sight and in no need of extra time in paris. They took only one of half a dozen clear cut chances over the two legs - two falling to John O'Shea, and one each to Robbie Keane, Damien Duff, Liam Lawrence and Kevin Doyle. In such a rarefied environment, that's not good enough.
Amid all the reflective wisdom, two points emerge alongside the unexplained change in seeding arrangement. One from Trapattoni himself - why the need for extra time in the second leg, when it manifestly favours the home team? Go straight to penalties after 180 minutes, he argued.
Secondly, a more complex issue: technology intervention. As a longtime advocate of same, I would still draw the line at the American Football and Tennis concept of each team/player having a specific amount of "challenges" per game. If a side has used its challenge by the time an outrageous injustice is visited on them, it hardly inspires the notion of true justice.
No-one, including Sepp Blatter, has presented a plausible opposition to the introduction of television technology. FIFA has got to come up with something more convincing than the difficulty of introducing technology to the full global football family or the delays while key decisions are being examined. In the time it would have taken Shay Given to retrieve the ball from his net on Wednesday night and take the subsequent free out for handball, the television match official would have communicated the correct decision to the referee.
There has been critically important decisions (not) made - one put Chelsea out and Liverpool in a Champions League final - but has there been a "goal" controversy so broad in its ramifications as the one which extinguished Ireland's World Cup finals ambitions on Wednesday night? The sheer breadth of the global news cycle yesterday suggests not.
Thierry Henry? That carefully-cultivated halo may require some garage work after his extra-time handy work. Nil points too for the nauseating series of conversations and embraces with Richard Dunne et al on the Stade de France pitch after the game. It's fanciful,if uplifting, to think how he could have glorified his reputation forever by owning up to the handball, but it's asking a lot. Some will namecheck the examples of Robbie Fowler and Paolo di Canio, but the context of both are relevant - League games away from home. Hardly the same as a World Cup play off in front of 80,000 desperate French fans.
If Henry is culpable, he is no more so than the procrastination by football's politicans on the video technology issue. If FIFA can't find a way to get a refixture then they can surely listen to Trapattoni and start limiting the potential for a repeat.
Ireland? Well, the FAI have a Board of Management meeting today and Lausanne's Court of Arbitration for Sport is still an option. There's a few twists in this controversy yet, and while it may all end up in nought, there's valuable lessons going forward for all concerned - Trapattoni, the FAI, Thierry Henry and Herr Blatter.
