Irish demand replay with France

Irish left back Kevin Kilbane said replays showed conclusively that Henry “handballed it once and it's still going out of play, so he's handled it again to make sure it doesn't go out of play. ... I asked him on the pitch: Did you handball it? And he said, 'Yes — but I didn't mean it.”'

Kilbane said he also asked Hansson after the final whistle if he had seen the incident.

“He said: 'I can 100 percent say it wasn't handball.' When he said that to me, I knew full well that he was just lying to me because he hadn't even seen it.”

Irish lawmaker Joe McHugh said France should follow the 1999 precedent set by Arsenal's French manager, Arsene Wenger, who volunteered to replay a match in England's FA Cup after Arsenal won on an unfair goal.

“Throughout the country today there is an air of bitterness. We were beaten unfairly and there is general disgust in France too,” McHugh said. “Friends of mine who attended last night's game phoned me this morning from a cafe in Paris to report that the French people are ashamed and do not regard this as an honest victory.”

Ahern said he doubted that FIFA would sanction a replay. He reflected the widespread Irish view that the sport's powers were biased in favor of ensuring France's qualification.

“They probably won't grant it as we are minnows in world football,” Ahern said, “but let's put them on the spot anyway.”

Several Irish players were in tears after Wednesday's match and rued their own missed scoring chances after outplaying France for much of the night.

“We got robbed,” Ireland defender Sean St. Ledger said. “We feel cheated. We were the better team.”

Henry's handball, he said, “has cost a lot of us our dreams.”

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