McShane remains scarred by memory of Paris pain

TWO years on from Paris and Paul McShane admits the mental scars have yet to heal.

The likelihood is they never will.

It took some time for most people in the Stade de France to realise what Thierry Henry had done. Not McShane. When Florent Malouda sent in that free-kick, it landed in McShane’s neck of the woods before the French captain used his left hand to control the ball. Twice.

Looking back at the replay, it is difficult to find fault with Roy Keane’s subsequent point that goalkeeper and defenders should have never allowed the ball to bounce inside the six-yard box but the punishment far outweighed the crime given the stakes.

What followed was months of emotional torture and France’s implosion in South Africa made things worse, if anything.

“Yeah, watching the World Cup that year, it was just like … if you’re going to cheat to get there, you might as well turn up,” said the Wicklow defender.

“You might as well give it a shot. It was frustrating to watch. We wanted to be there. It was hard to take at the time and it still is. You have those mental scars sometimes in football and that’s one.”

Keane aside, there was an overflow of support for the Irish in the wake of that controversy in Saint-Denis. Even the French contingent at Hull City at the time were gracious enough to offer their sympathies before it all gave way to the usual dressing-room banter. And now here we are again.

“Probably it does motivate you even more,” said McShane, “the manner we went out in the last play-off. It does spur you on a little bit more. Hopefully that will be the case (this week). That’s the way we’ve got to go so hopefully we get a bit of luck this time and we get there.”

This may be another play-off but the ground has shifted in the meantime. Ireland will start the two-legged affair as favourites, a fact personified by the beaming grin John Delaney wore in Poland when the draw was made, and with the second leg to be played here in Dublin. It’s a tag that has rarely sat comfortably with Irish sides regardless of the code, not even when Jack Charlton boasted an outfit bulging with men who were playing for Manchester United, Liverpool and Celtic.

“Maybe. We’ve sort of always been the underdogs going back to the ‘88 Euros and all the World Cups we’ve been in.

“You’ve just got to try and block that out as much as you can and just go about the game as we have been doing.

“We can’t be over confident going in because we’re the favourites because that always comes around and bites you. We’ve just got to go about it the way we’ve done the other games.”