Aie aie aie

Irish team Defender Sean St Ledger told journalists "We got robbed, you can tell by the boys' reaction that it hit his hand blatantly. We feel cheated – we were the better team over the two legs, every football fan in the stadium will say we were the better team tonight. It's cost a lot of us our dreams – as a boy I used to dream of playing in the World Cup, and now I'm not.

"He's said it hit his hand accidentally but, if you look at it, you can see it hits his hand twice. I'm not sure Henry's reputation has been tarnished. It doesn't look great but he's got his team to the World Cup finals. If it had been one of our team, we'd have probably done the same." The Swedish referee says he didn't see the handball, and I think it's really too bad that France doesn't use videos. Fortunately, this game has brought the subject back to the forefront.

French newspapers have been extremely outspoken about what happened. Le Parisien's headline reads: "Henry Saves France With His Hand." Le Figaro: "Henry: I am not the Referee." Le Monde: "Blues Relieved. Irish Disgusted." And the list continues.

The Blues certainly won the match, but lost a lot of support and admiration in the process. And while French coach Raymond Domenech says he's very happy about the results, the team will have to do a lot better in South Africa if they want to prove they really deserve to be there in the first place.

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