The goal that wasn’t - Do the right thing, play game again

SPORT is more important to most of us than is probably healthy or wise.

Even recognising that we remain obsessed about it in all its wonderful shapes and sizes because, at its stellar best, it lifts our lives above the ordinary.

It colours the grey.

Sport lets us dream great dreams, some are occasionally realised. It enriches our lives with days of great friendships and shared joys.

We can, if only for 90 – or 70 – minutes, imagine ourselves central to something extraordinarily beautiful and human.

We are determined to be animated, loud and unobjective participants in a fantasy. We revel in the blood-red tribalism, parochial or national. We crave the faux confrontation, the ones where we’re all friends afterwards and share a beer or five.

We love it so very much because it is an antidote to lives and realities too often grim and treadmill. This love is deepened and made even more irrational – like all great loves – by the idea that sport should be different; effort and talent, commitment and courage should be rewarded. Sport is supposed to be what life is not: it is supposed to be fair and honest, an antidote for reality and a compensation for human weaknesses.

Anyone who managed to hold those beliefs right up to Wednesday night, when Thierry Henry, a chevalier of the Legion d’Honneur, cheated, handled the ball and set up the goal that ended Ireland’s World Cup dreams would have been disappointed. They had to confront our real world in miniature.

The powerful saved their bacon by cheating, by breaking the rules, and the regulator saw nothing until it was too late. And, because the system is stacked in their favour none of us can be surprised if they get away with it. It’s almost as if you were dealing with bankers.

At this point it would be instructive to quote FIFA, soccer’s world body, on fair play. “Winning is without value if the victory has been achieved unfairly or dishonestly. Cheating is easy, but brings no pleasure. Playing fair requires courage and character. It is also more satisfying. Fair play always has it reward, even when the game is lost. Playing fair earns respect, while cheating only brings shame. Remember: it is only a game. And games are pointless unless played fairly.”

Any assessment of that declaration suggests that FIFA should be as angry as we are about the Paris smash-and-grab but will they do anything about it? Will they stand up for their principles or will they, like Groucho Marx, find another set more convenient for the moment at hand?

Will they order the French to replay the game or will they try to weather the storm and hope that the Paddies will eventually just go away? Most certainly they will have to respond to the formal complaint they received yesterday from the Football Association of Ireland over the fiasco. The FAI said the integrity of the game has been damaged. Earlier Minister for Justice, Dermot Ahern, also called for a replay.

They should have a considerable ally in FIFA boss Sepp Blatter who has fronted the organisation’s worldwide campaign for fairness in sport. It will be interesting to see if he satisfies France or the principles he espoused so valiantly, but don’t hold your breath.

Already the French teachers’ union Snep-FSU has said that the affair has set a bad example for children. “The France team will go to South Africa courtesy of unquestionable cheating which highlights the downward spiral affecting football today,” the union said.

There is precedent. FIFA ordered Uzbekistan to replay Bahrain in 2006 after the referee made a mistake after a penalty had been awarded. So why not now?

Many of those who profess themselves weary of the romance and hope we still attach to sport dismiss these arguments as childish, saying that if Robbie Keane had got Ireland to South Africa as Thierry Henry may have got France we would be singing a different tune.

Maybe so, but one thing is certain. If the Irish had cheated France, there would be a replay. Sepp Blatter, Michel Platini and all the shadowy, über influential sponsors, the ones who rearranged the draw for the playoffs, would insist on it. We would have no choice.

Bill Shankly, one of football’s great managers said that football is not a matter of life or death, it was, he said, much more important than that.

What happens next will again prove Shankly right, it is a matter of right or wrong. Play it again Sepp, prove that the beautiful game is not just another venal, corrupt charade. We have, after all, more than enough of those.