Three years ago today, everything went mad. Look there's no point revisiting all the teeth-gnashing and wailing and Fianna Fail press releases and Team 33 codology, but it's worth noting that, 3 years ago today, this injustice took place. Nothing has changed since. Light a candle.
It seems so long ago. It remains the best match Ireland has played in the Trapattoni era, an anomoly, a display of fearlessness and attacking guile against a top international side that we haven't been able to summon since. (By the way, has anyone every asked for Paul McShane's feelings on this in the last three years?)
I'm not sure if I believe in a higher power but I do believe in karma and my understanding of the wild ride of the Boys in Green in the year or two after this handball (and the shambles of the France team on an international level) was that everything from Moscow to Tallinn to Poznan was one massive karmic payback for what happened in Stade de France three years ago today. Karma got us as far as that Sunday evening in June against Croatia and then said, 'you've got to take care of the rest, lads'. Our collective moral outrage has decreased now and perhaps we can view this all with something approaching clarity. We should never get to a stage where we just laugh at that crazy thing that happened to us. The sight of Thierry Henry at the Emirates yesterday brought back many of those old emotions of hate. Maybe it's petty, but those emotions should never be forgotten.
Where were you? I was in Stockholm in bar full of French people in Gamla Stan. The patronising apologies they offered afterwards sickened me.
Light a candle.
