Sport

Henry admits handball but blames referee

THIERRY HENRY, the man whose handball effectively denied the Republic of Ireland a place at the World Cup finals, admitted afterwards…

MARY HANNIGAN at Stade de France
Thu Nov 19 2009 - 00:00

THIERRY HENRY, the man whose handball effectively denied the Republic of Ireland a place at the World Cup finals, admitted afterwards that he had handled the ball but then put the blame on the referee.

“I handled it, I admit it, but I’m not the referee. Squillaci jumped and the ball fell to me. I played it and we scored, but it was the referee’s decision. That’s why the Irish all ran to him, not to me.

“I said that I handled it to Richard Dunne, but he said the same thing to me, ‘you’re not the referee’.”

Kevin Doyle said it was sickening to go out of the World Cup to a goal which should have been disallowed.

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“The linesman had the best view, apart from Shay Given,” said Doyle. “I am sure Henry did not expect to get away with it because it was so obvious. It is difficult, we are all gutted.”

Defender Seán St Ledger admitted Ireland felt “robbed” after France’s controversial winner.

“We got robbed, you can tell by the boys’ reaction, it hit his hand blatantly,” St Ledger said.

“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.”

And the 24-year-old called for video technology to be introduced to prevent such controversies in the future.

“I don’t understand why we haven’t got replays in this day and age,” he continued. “You can get replays within 10, 30 seconds and it would have helped today.”

While St Ledger was critical of Henry for his part in the incident, he did not feel the forward’s reputation in the game would suffer.

He added: “He’s said it hit his hand accidentally, but if you look at it you can clearly see it hits his hand twice.

“I’m not sure (his 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 blame doesn’t necessarily fall on him, but he’s handled it. Everyone can see it around the world.”