FAI Dishonesty Bandwagon

23rd Nov 2009

FAI Dishonesty Bandwagon

Roy Keane is dead right. As usual the Mayfield man has called a spade a spade as the FAI appealed for a replay against France after Thierry Henry's blatant hand ball. Roy said:

"it's the usual FAI reaction - 'we've been robbed, the honesty of the game...' It's rubbish."

Handball

The hypocrisy of the FAI would be laughable if the outcome of the game in Paris wasn't so depressing. The Irish players admitted they would have done the same thing if they thought they'd get away with it. Is that what young kids in Cork playing the game need to hear?

Lambasting the French for their lack of honesty is disingenuous when the Irish players have so blatantly said they would have done the exact same thing had they had the chance. Few are choosing to focus on this sad state of affairs.

Back in February the FAI didn't offer Georgia a replay when Robbie Keane scored from an incorrect penalty decision. To add more hypocrisy the Dublin government cringingly jumped on the populist replay bandwagon - themselves fully furnished with a long list of embarrassing acts of dishonesty.

Soccer is a game riddled with devious cheating but the governing authorities are so corrupted by money that they can't bring themselves to do anything about it. Sounds a bit like Ireland's property bubble doesn't it?

Dishonesty in the so-called 'beautiful game' is so rampant that it is now appears to be acceptable - the only requirement being that illegal actions must be hidden from the ref. The ethos of the current era is summed up by the old chancer's saying: it ain't a crime if you don't get caught and it's turning people off the sport.

Had the goal not gone in, Ireland might have conceded another or lost on penalties. Let's not cod ourselves that had the goal not been allowed then we were definitely on the plane to South Africa. There was still a drawn match to decide.

FAI: The mockeyah moral high ground

Some of us who wanted to see the Republic get to the World Cup might find Keano's opinion hard to swallow. It feels like he's being disloyal but honesty is often a cold bedfellow and it isn't in a Rebel's nature to blindly tow the line.

Without this regular blast of Corkonian honesty the Irish soccer squad would still be training in car parks and our hurlers and footballers would be thumbing lifts to play in All-Ireland finals.

The reality is that there are a mix of reasons that France are going to the World Cup instead of Ireland and we're turning a convenient blind eye to some of them. We put the warm freshly baked scones out on the window ledge in a sport where dishonesty is rife and we're surprised somebody nicked them.

It's the natural instinct of a small island underdog to play victim as a bigger nation appears to trample on our dreams of success. It's part of the old 'poor us' mindset that we partly shook off during the Celtic Tiger but seem to be revisiting more and more since the country's juggernaut economy encountered some super sized potholes.

Had the shoe of desperation been on the other foot, we would have grabbed a slice of French cake to feed our rumbling bellies given half a chance.

Of course Ireland were let down by officials last week but on other occasions we've benefited so the focus should be on removing the lottery element of the sport and to reward honesty not calculating cowards like Henry.

We can say we were victims of an injustice or conspiracy but on other days we were happy to be the beneficiaries of the same system. FIFA's reasons for not allowing video evidence appear completely groundless. That should be the real focus of Ireland's anger.


Damien Duff admits he would have done it - see it here
See Robbie Keane's mysterious penalty against Georgia here
See Roy Keane's press conference here