‘Hand of Frog’ – Understanding the Backlash
// November 20th, 2009 // Uncategorized
I didn’t think it would be too long before the anti Irish backlash backlash started. Much like those @ssholes in school who thought they were cool by being the first person to turn against Oasis/Backstreet Boys, there’s always some smug idiot who thinks they’re cleverer than everybody else.
Lazar did a pretty excellent job summarising how painful the defeat was, but as with everything, the context is important. First up is the general shitty state of the country. Forget the economic depression in the US, Ireland has suffered worse than any other country. The London Times reported in April that Ireland has suffered the greatest decline in economic growth of any industrialized nation since the Great Depression. House prices have dropped as low as 33% of what they were 2 years ago in many places. Unemployment rate is currently a whopping 13% and generally it’s been one big depressing moan fest for the last few years. Feeling sorry for us yet? And, it’s rained every single day for the last 482 (possibly) too. As a country we really really needed something to take our minds off everything and something to unite the country. 2 million people tuned into RTE to watch the second leg against France. That’s 2 million out of a population of 4 million.
When we qualified for our first World Cup in 1990, it has been argued many times by respected economists that this was a significant factor in kickstarting the Celtic Tiger. The confidence of being represented on the World stage, the pride in competing equally with global powers (in both a footballing and non footballing sense) really changed the country. You can’t underestimate the effects of the entire country coming together to support their heroes. People who have no interest in Soccer can still sing our songs from that tournament to this day and it really was one of the defining moments in our history.
When FIFA realized that France, Germany and Cristiano Ronaldo might end up in the playoffs and decided to change the rules at the last moment by seeding the playoffs it was a real kick in the teeth. Forget about Fair Play or equal playing fields, it’s all about FIFA keeping their sponsors happy, maximising TV revenues and making money. Forget the fact that Ireland would bring ten times more fans to South Africa than France would, they have a bigger TV market and Michel Platini is French. How could the fact that the direct employees of the Swedish referee team, the people who have the power to make or break the referee have outwardly expressed their preference for France to prevail not affect at some level the referee’s judgement (consciously or subconsciously)?
On to the game itself. Nobody gave us any hope of going to Paris and being the first European team to ever turn around a home leg playoff deficit. How could our motley crew of Premiership reserves and nobodies compete with the Champions League Galacticos of the French team? But they more than competed. We actually outplayed them. Courage isn’t about going up for a header with John Terry or slide tackling Joey Barton. Courage is about having the conviction and the belief to get on the ball and outplaying a vastly technically superior and experienced team. The French were cowards, frightened by their own fickle fans, while the Irish gave their everything in front of 25,000 travelling supporters who outsung the French the whole way through. And then he cheated.
Anybody who says it’s not Henry’s fault, it’s the refereee’s fault, or that if it happened to Ireland we would have done the same thing is just wrong. Wrong Wrong WRONG. If football was reduced to one fundamental rule, it’s that you can’t use your hands. And Henry (one of the biggest stars of the World game), being marked by Paul McShane (one of the worst players in the Premiership) cheated. It wasn’t like the ball hit his hand and he played the advantage. He stuck his hand out to stop the ball going out of play. He then used his hand a second time to position it so he could knock it across the goal for Gallas to score. This isn’t about instinct or things evening themselves out. This is about a double cynical cheat to end a lot of people’s dreams. Forget his subsequent admissions of guilt after the game. The fact that he wheeled away in delight with that smug look on his face says it all. So what if after the game he admitted he handled it. We can all see he handled it and him admitting it after the game doesn’t change anything. A better man would not have handled it in the first place, would have told the referee (this actually happens more than you think – remember Robbie Fowler protesting over a penalty he was awarded), or at least would have been too embarasseed to celebrate.
The reaction in Ireland (and around the World) has been staggering. Everybody from the Football Association of Ireland to our Taoiseach (prime minister) have called for a replay. 80% of French residents think a replay should take place. The French Gym Teachers Union have condemmed Henry and criticized his cheating. A facebook group asking for a replay has already had 260,000 members join. There’s protest marches taking place in Dublin tomorrow, marching to the French Embassy. Upon being informed of the protest, An Garda (the Irish Police) have said they will join the march too.
We all know we’re not going to get a replay, but all the protesting isn’t about that. We don’t want people to feel sorry for us either, we’ve had enough of that over the years. What we do want is to stand up to the corruption and greed that favors the big and powerful over the small. And we want to save football. Cheating is not acceptable. Cheating is not right. Cheating is ruining the game and cheats shouldn’t prosper. Anybody who says differently is wrong and missing some element of being human.
Sign the petition, Join the Facebook Group, We Shall Overcome!
Posted by Cass
17 Responses to “‘Hand of Frog’ – Understanding the Backlash”
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Well said, Cass. People have been saying that if it were anyone else they would do the same thing, which is completely wrong. I referee a rec league bunch or stuck-up cheats, and even they will admit if Ive wrongly given a penalty. Henry has always acted like he was so self-righteous, and is doing so even now. But the truth is, he cheated by going against the laws of the game, and ran off celebrating instead of agreeing with the Irish players who protested.
After all the years without Ireland in WC finals, I really hoped it would happen. It has been one of the saddest days in football I have ever witnessed.
Here’s the easy bit, I agree with you Cass.
The difficult bit for me is to say something constructive ( something i’m not renowned for ).
Ireland are not going to South Africa in 2010 .
They will not be playing in the World Cup.
50,000 or so Irish fans will not be booking their passage.
France are, will be playing, with (at best estimate, 10,000 fans behind them).
Now if France had beaten Ireland fair and square, what i have just said is an irrelevance.
But it isn’t, is it ?
Ceding – Oh Christ !
FIFA – Oh Christ !
Never mind the conspiracy theories : Big Country vs Little Country : thus revenue, how do Blatter & Co always get it ingloriously wrong ?
Well that’s an easy one isn’t it ?
That the result stands saddens me !
My partner, who is French, seems to have run away back to her mother’s in St Nazaire after the outcry at our local pub.
Of course she will be welcomed back, which is more than i can say for T. Henry. I doubt he will be served in the Black Swan !
Not that he ever visited or will do, but perhaps, and more daunting, getting a round in in S.A. will prove more problematic.
I have written elsewhere, Blubber, I hope you have a World Cup festooned with controversy in every match.
Why ? Because i’m mad, that’s why !
When i concluded by saying i was mad, I of course meant I was “jolly jolly cross” not insane, Oops I’ll have to go now as the Doctor’s arrived and he looks serious.
Bye.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/internationals/8370327.stm
Roy Keane continues to reach new heights of pathetic loser @ssholeness.
I wasn’t sure where I stood on the matter but I can’t disagree with anything he said.
I saw the first 30 minutes of this match in a Mexican airport, then just highlights on ESPN during the flight. It wasn’t just that Henry handled the ball, twice. First, it was off sides. Then somebody else handled it to Henry. THEN Henry handled it. I have seen this in regular speed about 12 times and in various slow motions about 20 times. Long story short: if I did it, even in a Saturday pick up with other old geezers like me, I would have had to call the penalty on myself. The fundamental thing is not to use the hands. Period. All the rest of the analysis imho never gets past that basic point. Futbol requires nonuse of hands. Intentional use (twice in this case) is unforgiveable and if one does it, one has to call the penalty on himself.
Callum, with the greatest respect, quoting Roy Keane on any matter does you no favours. Roy Keane has long ago lost any standing he once had in the game. The comments he has come out with in the last few years are beyond defence by even his most ardent supporters from back in 2002. The memories of the civil war he caused during that time are still too fresh and painful for me to reopen, but please do a google search of some of his quotes from the last couple of years. No matter what the issue, if you’re on the same side as Roy Keane on any matter than you need to take a long hard look at your life and the person you are.
Look, Henry is obviously a cheat, and I don’t agree with people saying ‘it’s not Henry’s fault’ or ‘anybody would’ve done the same’, or ‘it’s just a natural reaction.’ I think that’s bollocks. However, it is, inarguably, some pretty ropey defending from Ireland. The only reason the guillotine exists is because one team is mentally not as strong as the other.
Even the french and Henry agreed that there should have been a replay.
but
FIFA’s a bitch
Yeah, Henry suggested there should’ve been a replay about 5 minutes after FIFA announced there would be no replay, before which he was strangely silent on the matter
As I was the first to say:
1. don’t blame Henry,
2. blame the ref, and
3. we would have done the same,
I feel I have some right of reply to the post, although it’s belated and I could, ironically, be told to shut up and get over it.
This weekend, the Daily Telegraph, arguable Australia’s worst newspaper, published an article on the top 10 sporting cheats of all time, ranking the Hand of Frog (hereafter HoF) incident at number 1. The fact that an Australian newspaper feels that Ireland getting stomach punched is worse than, for example, a man dressing up as a woman to compete in the 1936 Olympics, is perhaps evidence of the emotional power of the stomach punch. It is an article that could only have been published in the immediate aftermath of the atrocity.
To clarify, I agree that Henry is a bit of a shit for HoFing – I won’t be buying a mazda any time soon – but I don’t think that he is unusually shitty for a professional athlete. I think that, rather than judging him by your own ethical standards, he should be judged relative to other professional athletes. For all of the condemnation that has come out from the man on the street/media, I’ve yet to hear an athlete condemn him in the same terms. There are lots of cheaters (premeditated or otherwise) that never get caught, and not many come clean. I don’t think that HoF was as shitty as the Hand of Back incident of 2002 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mQlJ8K7XjQc), when Munster were in a prime position to score a goal and win the European Cup in the dying moments of the game (apologies for including mention of rugby in a US soccer forum).
I agree that the financial interests are often in direct contradiction to the ethos of fair competition that many sports fans and amateur athletes imagine to be at the core of their passion. Although conflict of interest issues like those that FIFA face may be a factor, I believe the greater determinant of foul play is simply win-at-all-costs mentality, which is a natural outcome of living in a competitive environment for your entire life. Think how many rivals that a professional athlete has to overcome before they get to that 100,000 Euro per week salary, and it becomes clear that ANY edge is worth it (from a competitive, not ethical standpoint). As described by Malcolm Gladwell in ‘Outliers’, the real determinant of sporting success is access to highly restricted expert training and the financial backing to allow you to use those facilities; Henry at 10 was probably only marginally better than his school mates. It’s maintaining those tiny margins for the 10 years of pre-professional football that gets you to the top.
The only way to overcome the status quo is for fans, rather than financial interests, to dictate the team’s priorities. The only way to do this is to become one of the financial interests yourself. This traditionally meant becoming a major stakeholder, but the modern era offers this opportunity to fans – Ebbsfleet United supposedly allow fans to have a vote on management issues for 35 quid a year. The problem is that you have to be prepared to accept that you will lose sometimes where you could have won if you enforce a strictly by the book policy.
Finally, I accept that the first rule of football is ‘don’t use your hands’, but the first rule of professional sports is ‘play the whistle’. May the flaming begin.
Just on the Roy Keane posts. I have supported him since 2002, but this is just beyond belief. He almost looked happy that this has happened. He really is a small small man.
this is the only thing I agree with Roy Keane on
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N-R2egw30WA
Nice post, Simon. Actually, both Cass and I were in the first group that signed up to own Ebsfleet United. However, we immediately cancelled our memberships when the management decided that team selection was no longer going to be done by the owners, but by the manager. Democracy gets squished at every turn as soon as a little money is involved. See the Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP) for an even better example.
The Threads that Bind Us
We Irish make a good fist of being cynics. But at heart we are anything but. We believe in the dream. Tell us a good myth and we will buy it, hook, line and most probably sinker. Whether it be the American Dream, the Roman Church Dream, the Celtic Tiger Dream or the Good Intentions of Fianna Fail Dream. Now that the dust has begun to settle slightly on the Main de Dieu affair, what lessons are we to take from the sorry tale of Ireland’s unfair departure from the World Cup?
For a start, the lets-get-a-grip bit. It is not the end of the world that we missed out on qualifying for the World Cup. There are more serious issues; floods, global warming, the financial crisis. But football, as has been observed before, is a metaphor for life. Football makes us feel good. Football in the 1980’s was one of the things that gave us belief in ourselves. It has often been said that Jack Charlton and – for entirely different reasons – Mary Robinson started the Celtic Tiger. Regardless of all that, it will be with a strange tinge of regret that we watch Henry, Gallas and friends go about their business in South Africa 2010. Our minds will inevitably drift back to a November evening in 2009.
Remember? First off, we sang. The 5000 or so of us who had forked out and travelled to the match sang their lungs out for Amhrain na bFiann, but they sang La Marseillaise nearly as lustily, shoulder to shoulder with our hosts. They bought into the occasion, into the pageant, into the competition with our traditional belief, commitment and humour. The rest of us sang along mentally with the TV. The country is small, and many of the Irish soccer fans would also have watched rugby matches at the Stade de France. We like the French. We knew a lot of their players, some in particular from their high profile gigs in England. The feeling in our hearts was more of hope than of conviction, being 1 – 0 down from the first leg. But we do the role of underdog well. When no one expects much from us, we are always good.
The world of the top flight professional footballer is one far removed from the world inhabited by most football fans. Millions of words have been written about the fishbowl of celebrity. But, like a lot of things, you probably need to be there to really understand what being a famous footballer is all about. We know, but don’t understand their world, a world in which they (generally) start out young, leave (an often modest) home, never grow up and dedicate huge work to their skills and fitness. They pretty well sacrifice everything to become one of the few, the very few who graduate, get through the eye of the needle and fulfil their dreams of fame and riches.
It might be well to contemplate here some of the threads that bind the fans and these remote football stars together. One such is obvious. It is memory. Most footballers were once fans themselves. They stood on the terraces and dreamed. Another link are the referees, the middle-aged lads who puff and huff through the game blowing (or not blowing) whistles and raising flags. Most of these are part time (although FIFA are said to favour more professional referees), and they are modestly paid, especially in comparison to the celebrities whose play they regulate. Theirs is the epitome of a thankless job. Sometimes all that opposing fans agree on are the failures of the ref and his team.
Another link between fans and players are the managers. However high flying and however famous a manager is he dare not incur the displeasure of the fans. Losing the dressing room is one thing; but losing the terrace is even more threatening for the career of a gaffer.
At some stage in the Stade de France on 18 November, it dawned on Thierry Henry that he was not playing in a superleague, Spanish or English or French. An international, especially this kind of international, is a different beast. Here you play with the honour of your country at stake. And to most people, even today, that means something. The Irish fans are not cynics; but neither are the French. They too, sang. They too, believed. And from their reaction in various blogs, in overwhelming votes on the Internet, in their calls for the match to be replayed, it is obvious that a sporting occasion, not a win-at-all-costs one was what they thought they were attending. Fans across the globe, English fans, Hungarian fans, Japanese fans, all voiced their outrage and disquiet at the injustice. These are not cynics either. A small minority, of course, insisted on a display of world-weary cynicism. But, as a number of people pointed out, a large proportion of the consumers of football and its associated merchandise are children. And they are not cynical either.
It was informative to listen to a series of professional footballers deliver their verdicts on the subject of the Henry foul that got away. Because of the sacrifices they have made, perhaps because they have had to re-invent super-flexible versions of themselves to get through the eye of the needle, the top players and ex-players have become as cynical as soldiers. Be it Roy Keane or Mick McCarthy. Be it Ronnie Whelan or David Beckham. And this sorry affair gives us a glimpse behind the clichés of football at the real people who perform week in week out for the clubs. You can detect the egos, the arrogance of course. But you can also detect self doubt, self loathing, even in the words of Roy Keane. He seems to be forever fighting a shadow Roy Keane who forgot to bring the footballs to Saipan or who is afraid to win, or who might have let the ball hop in the six yard box, once, at the end of a tired game, and lost everything. He had a fantastic playing career, and has entered the hall of fame as one of the true greats of Ireland and of Manchester United. He always seemed to have time on the ball, even in the most crowded midfield. He had authority on that field of dreams. Yet he left his last management job with an air of Hari Kiri about him. Roy needs to give himself a break. And give others a break, too.
Likewise Stephen Ireland, in a totally different way. Ireland just can’t believe he got through the needle’s narrow eye. He with his gawky body and prematurely receding hair. To convince himself, he keeps flaunting absurdly expensive cars, and giving interviews explaining why he’s not coming back to play for his country. He once said (perhaps in jest) that he hates football. He is every inch the star but all his body language betrays is fear. He is afraid of breaking the spell. He is afraid to play for Ireland, because he might be found out. He might not be good enough. You have to think for a second, when you try to name examples of people at the very top who seem to have kept their innocence and personal balance. But, from a distance, we can venture Ryan Giggs, Richard Dunne, Shay Given. Others have had their difficulties and recovered and carried on. It must be a strange place these lads occupy.
Thierry Henry seems basically to be a nice guy. His post match comments regarding his actions and even his apology for his celebration show that he is a man with a conscience and a sense of justice. It is true that his reaction was confused. He played up the goal, then later sat beside Richard Dunne on the pitch and tried to engage him in discussion. Not because he is a cynic, but because he knew by then that he was a loser, too. He had heard the singing and remembered the faces of the Irish fans. Later he saw the tears of the Irish. The uproar and genuine anger across the world did hurt him. There is no doubt about that. He was the captain in a very real sense of the French team. It is he, reports claim, rather than the vague Domenech, who really leads – and perhaps even picks – the French side. But once the storm broke Henri found himself isolated and abandoned, by the French FA, and – by the tone of his remarks – perhaps even by his playing colleagues. Everyone had to wait to see if he might have to be sacrificed. At this level, the players may be cynical. But the blazer brigade, made up of ex players and wannabe players are cynical squared. Cynical magnified to grotesque levels.
Korea, the World Cup host nation, were cheated into closing stages of the World Cup finals in 2002, at the expense of Italy. Byron Moreno, the referee of the match, wrongly disallowed a perfectly good Italian goal by Tommasi, and sent off an Italian player unjustly. The Italian coach at the time was one Giovanni Trappatoni. Moreno was later banned for 20 matches in his native Ecuador for playing excessive (13 minutes, after 6 had been signalled) extra time, thereby affecting the results of a match between Liga Deportiva Universitaria de Quito and Barcelona Sporting Club.
The seeding made half way through the 2009 World Cup qualifying competition was clearly designed to affect the results. In the days before the match, the French newspaper Le Figaro wrote that the seeding of the playoff draw had been deliberately loaded in favour of the ‘big’ teams; and they questioned the influence of Adidas, sponsors of the French team. Right from the start, the preference of the world governing body were clear. This put – even if no pressure other than this was exerted – a terrible strain on one of the key links between the fans and the never-never land of top level football. The referee.
On the night of the match the Swedish official Hansson decided to employ a conventional ‘left handed’ diagonal system of control to monitor and regulate play. This system basically breaks the pitch into four quadrants. At the time when the French got their ‘goal’, the first two quadrants were in the Irish half (Q1 was on Shay Givens right) and the other two were in the French half. The ref was diagonally patrolling from quadrant four to quadrant one, leaving his first assistant, Wittberg, quadrant 3 in the French half and a guy called Frederik Nilsson, the second assistant, quadrant 2 along the left side of the Irish touchline. From the endless replays, Nilsson seemed to be the only one with a clear view of the incident. It was his direct responsibility to spot that two French players were offside as the ball came in. He was standing in the correct position, directly in line with the last defender. Inexplicably, though, he missed both the handball and the offside. Nilsson was asleep. Nilsson, unlike Hansson, is not a full time ref. He is down on the FIFA site as a ‘foreman’.
When the Irish players protested, referee Hansson, in communication perhaps with his linesman, made a gesture as if the ball was striking his chest and the side of his body. His message was; I saw it (or he saw it), it was a good goal, you are wrong to protest. He even booked Damien Duff for over-zealous complaints. Of course video evidence seconds later showed that it was the ref that was wrong. Did he consult with his linesman via his audio link? Presumably. There have been incidents where the officials have ‘unofficially’ used the television replay to make a judgement. But the French director seemed to take an inordinately long time to show the replay on the big screens. Anyway, Hansson made his decision, the game re-started, and that was that.
In fairness to him, Nilsson had – rightly – flagged an Italian ‘goal’ by Sidney Govou as offside in the 111th minute. The referee also denied Nicholas Anelka a penalty claim. Replays showed Anelka dived. And he also blew up on a couple of occasions when Robbie Keane handled the ball. In general, fans agreed, the Swedish officials had a good game, until the lapse in the first half of extra time.
After the world wide post-match inquest began, the focus shifted away from Henry and the Swedish referees and on to the world body and its officials. Henry admitted what he did. Everyone in the world knew that a legitimate goal had not been scored. We were really in new territory here. So what was the most sensible action, in the light of this knowledge?
FIFA were already in their bunker. A bland version of the match was described on their website, omitting for the first 24 hours any mention of the handball. They cited the rules of the game in their statement responding to the FAI call for a replay. The referee’s decision is final, they said, pointing to the rule book. Only – the referee’s decision is not final, it turns out. Uzbekistan and Bahrain had a game replayed under the stewardship of FIFA during the 2006 qualifiers, on the basis of a referee’s mistake.
And here, I would suggest, lies the greatest danger for Sepp Blatter and the suits in FIFA. As long as the threads that bind the true fans to the strange world of the booted gladiators hold strong, their position (and those of sponsors, etc.) is safe. But break that spell, and get half a million of them baying for blood and you can forget the deals. You can forget the massive edifice that is world football. Because, like the banking system, the entire thing works on the basis of confidence. World wrestling is fun, but no one believes it is real. If the paying football punters were to become as cynical as the players, not to mention the officers of the governing bodies, the world game would not last a wet week. Stay un-cynical, Ireland fans, and true fans everywhere. Believe, for as long as you can.
Padraig,
Sepp Blatter has no conscience when it comes to you and millions of others who are passionate about soccer, particularly when, as in your case , you have the effrontery to come over as articulate.
We seem to have got to the stage where the ” Emperor wore no clothes “.
How-ever,
On the other hand we could always K… H..
( That’s a Knighthood should you Spooks be interested )