O’Driscoll wades into debate
The rugby skipper watched the game in the Irish team room at the Killiney base as they prepared for this afternoon’s clash with Fiji at the RDS. The failure of the officials to spot Thierry Henry’s infringement infuriated players and management.
The Irish skipper revealed he sent a text to Damien Duff after the Stade de France dramatics to tell the Fulham winger: “what a privilege it was to watch a performance and how they had done everyone proud”.
Though present to discuss this afternoon’s autumn international with Fiji, O’Driscoll took time to discuss the matter of Henry’s decisive intervention prior to the crucial William Gallas goal.
O’Driscoll said: “It was probably the second touch of the hand ball was the one that irked everyone.
“It’s one thing trying to control it, but then keeping it in play with the second palm was what really got to everyone. It’s open to interpretation as to whether it was cheating or bending the rules to the extreme.
“When it happened, I just thought, simple free kick and possible yellow card. But when I saw the panic in Shay’s (Given) face when he came running out to the referee, you could tell he was contemplating giving the goal. And then, when he started running away, it was a little bit of amazement that the whole world has seen this and it was down to two people who hadn’t – the assistant referee and the referee himself. Yeah, I was a bit incredulous.”
He continued: “Like everyone else in the country, we felt disappointed and deflated at the outcome. Sport can be extremely cruel at times and injustices are done. At times, it doesn’t seem fair and this was one of those circumstances.”
However, he didn’t try to pretend that similar acts of gamesmanship are not part and parcel of practically every sport including rugby. Several years ago, Andy Haden, a celebrated New Zealand second-row, duped the referee into awarding a match winning penalty to the All Blacks by diving theatrically out of a line-out pretending he had been pushed by a Welsh opponent.
Furthermore, Munster fans will never forget how Peter Stringer had the ball dashed from his hands as he tried to put it into a scrum in front of the Leicester posts in the dying minutes of a European Cup decider.
“There was a similar but different incident in the Heineken final a few years ago between Leicester and Munster,” O’Driscoll recalled. “Neil Back certainly bent the rules in his favour and again a huge amount was discussed about it. It’s certainly pushing the boundaries for some people and pushing them too far for others. It was all part of the game.”
Asked if he felt Henry could be excused in the event of it being a totally instinctive reaction, O’Driscoll stated: “I think you’d have to ask him. It probably was … he was trying to do whatever he could to win the game. But I couldn’t answer that for him, whether it was instinctive or nor, or whether he thought maybe the first one was instinctive and the second a case of ‘I’ve got this far, I may as well try and push it another little bit’.”
The introduction of television match officials has been hugely beneficial to rugby and after this latest incident in Paris, there has been a widespread demand for a similar system in football.
However, Ireland coach Declan Kidney was non-committal on the issue. “The jury is still out for some people in rugby who feel the TMOs slow the game down. Each code has its own modus operandi. I suppose hurling is one where you say, if we had a TMO, we’d never get a game finished. As for rugby … somebody told us there were 127 possible infringements at the line-out and ten probably happen in every one of them. What do you blow up and what do you not blow up? It’s for each group to take a look at it and see what’s best for them. Sometimes, TMOs are extremely helpful, some times they’re good telly. Sport is something that plays on the emotions of life and has the highs and lows of it.
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