Whose defending what he did, I see no one really doing so, there are genuine questions as to his intentions thoughts and motivation to do what he did. Is anyone decide he ran to that near post before the ball was knocked in intending to hand ball it, its doubtful, but he handballed it, maybe he could have said to the ref the goal shouldn't stand, maybe not.
The thing is I don't for a single second believe anyone in the Ireland camp would have done differently, its the talking about it this morale highground Ireland are parading around on, Duff has cheated for Ireland to get a penalty, Keane dives, not often he's not a frequent cheater, for me I don't class him with a Ronaldo or Gerrard, but I can't name a player who hasn't conned the ref, I can't name one who hasn't done it multiple times, I can only name a handful that do it multiple times in most games they play in. Those guys for me are real cheats, Henry, cheated, like EVERY footballer.
Its just riles me that Ireland are acting as if none of them cheat, there was "cheating" in that game from Ireland, the difference, the outcome of the cheating, nothing more or less. Cheating is cheating the more you do it the worse you are, the result of the cheating doesn't mean you cheat more than others, its a single decision, I can't remember a huge quantity of other times Henry has cheated, no matter the scale of what resulted from the handball, its still just a handball, something that occurs in almost every single game in football. I don't forget the guys career or brand him a bigger cheat than anyone else. Nor do I pretend no Arsenal players haven't cheated, nor England players, nor Irish.
At the moment everyone cheats, sometimes the cheating will result in red cards for others, sometimes in goals, sometimes in yellows/reds for the attempt to cheat, not sure how thats different to the past 30 years of football, as shown by Maradona doing it so long ago, and Ireland inbetween.
Frankly the Russian game was far worse and they have a million times more right to feel agrieved than Ireland, who weren't going to win anyway. Russia were the better team, and when one or two Slovenian players should have been sent off, including the goalkeeper, instead the ref ridiculously sent off 2 Russian players. I have no doubt Russia would have won if the Slovak goalkeeper was sent off but they didn't go through. I have basically no doubt France would have won without the handball, and they went through.
Yes his missed, but the goal seem to happened because of the penalty...
