The Job Will Not Save You

If the status updates of my Facebook friends is representative of Ireland’s collective psyche, then we were a nation in mourning last night. The word “gutted” was used by not a few, as the general air of gloom and doom loomed large. My initial -- and rather cynical -- reaction to all of this was, “These people obviously haven’t seen Ireland’s other qualification games, otherwise they’d be used to the post-match depression that inevitably follows”. The away fixture against Cyprus springs to mind. There’s an old saying in football - When Cyprus have more possession than you, then WHAT THE HELL IS UP WITH THAT!?

But I digress. Last night’s match was no Nicosian nightmare. For large swathes of the game, Ireland were the better football team. Our goal was one of real quality; and one of the utmost rarity, with Zinedine Kilbane providing the penetrating through-ball which unlocked the French defense. It was a pass that the onlooking (and let’s face it, cool looking) Zinedine Zidane would have been proud of.

And there were chances after that. Oh there were chances. Damien Duff managed to make a horlicks of a one-on-one. You could argue that he is not a right-footer, but that is no excuse. You’re a professional football player who gets paid thousands of pounds per week to kick a ball. The least you can do is be able to kick it with both of your feet. Robbie Keane managed to out-do Duff by missing an even more glorious opportunity to bury the French once and for all. With only the keeper to beat, he decided the best way to do so was to take it around him. What he didn’t seem to factor in was that he had almost no space in which to accomplish said task, and he simply ran the ball over the end line. What Robbie attempted -- taking it ‘round the keeper -- was indeed possible, but he needed to shift the ball onto his left foot quickly rather then merely let the ball run and hope to catch up with it. If you want to see how it should have been done, click here.

With those two chances spurned, you couldn’t help but feel that it “wasn’t our night”. The circumstances surrounding France’s winner confirmed as much. It could have been disallowed on roughly three accounts, but it wasn’t. Our sense of injustice was tingled. We became the righteous sufferers who bore the wrath of FIFA. We were its sacrificial lamb, who took the punishment of no World Cup trip upon itself. We were the scape-goat the was banished to the wilderness of a quiet summer outside of South Africa. And we were not one bit happy about it.

Thierry Henry has been branded a cheat. Go 6 minutes 41 seconds into this clip, and you’ll hear the sentiments of a million Irish people. I’ve never been a fan of the former Gooner, and so as with Rawls and McNulty, if Henry was a big cheat then I’d be the first to say it. But what he did was simply act human. It was instinctive, and something I wouldn’t put past any of the Irish players.

Cast your mind back to Ireland’s ridiculous penalty to equalise against Georgia. Nobody knew what it was for, and yet Kevin Doyle had his hand up appealing for it. Why? Because he’s a big cheat? Maybe, but there’s also the possibility that he was so desperate for Ireland to score that he would instinctively brand something legitimate “illegitimate” in order to influence the referee. There was no handball, or whatever, by any Georgian player, and yet Ireland got a penalty and secured a much needed result.

Henry handled the ball, but it was not deemed a foul. A Georgian player didn’t handle the ball, and yet Kevin Doyle got the penalty he so badly craved. I wonder what the Georgian reaction to that was on Facebook. Something about FIFA favouring the more established nations, perhaps.

Of course it’s perfectly okay to be upset about this injustice (we wouldn't be human if we weren't), but I think that taking our anger out on Henry for his handball is misguided, as is branding him a “cheat”. There are plenty of other reasons to dislike the Barcelona forward -- he’s arrogant, he’s French (there’s two to get the ball rolling) -- but to call him a cheat is to go too far. It is to misunderstand the game of football. Think of Eduardo of Arsenal getting booed for his dive against Celtic. Is he a big cheat? Not exactly. He simply did what almost most all footballers do in that situation. If you want to boo him then you are free to do so, but on that principle you had better be prepared to boo almost every football player that walks out onto a pitch. And while you’re at it, remember to boo those people who surf the internet during work hours, or who take an extra fifteen minutes for their lunch break.

Ireland lost, and we can all be upset about the way it happened. We can even be “gutted”, because our group of hard-working players deserved to be rewarded for their noble efforts. But right after the game, my brother put all of our collective misery into perspective. Four young women died in a car on their way to do some Christmas shopping a couple of days ago. There are greater injustices in the world than Henry’s illegal use of his left arm. Think also of Robert Enke, the German goalkeeper who recently took his own life after a long battle with depression. How did we let this happen? Could anything have been done to prevent it?

Football is not a matter of life and death, but it tells us a lot about ourselves that we often act like it -- or something similar to it -- is. Life goes on, people. Listen to the wise words of Lester Freamon and pay heed to what he says: the job will not save you.

[Dismounts from high horse.]

There is light at the end of the tunnel, however. The Premier League starts back on Saturday, with Liverpool playing Man City in what could be a pivotal fixture for both clubs. International football was always just a nuisance anyway, wasn’t it?