So it was a handball. Now get over it.

Jim Beglin – “I think McShane should have dealt with it, George.”
George Hamilton – “…total confusion in the Irish defence…”
John Giles – “McShane did nothing…”

Thierry Henry handled the ball before he passed it to the French goalscorer, Gallas. The Irish defence were so busy flailing in outrage that they didn’t try to defend. Gallas’s complete freedom in the box was dreadful from an Irish point of view. Also, France had a legitimate penalty claim turned down by the referee. So yes, it was unfortunate that Ireland lost, but not unexpected. While they were probably the better team overall, they didn’t make good on that superiority.

So why the outrage at Roy Keane’s statement that the Irish defence was at fault and that people should accept that we lost and get on with it? Maybe it’s that he also said that we’re more comfortable in the martyr role than with the prospect of actually winning. A little too close to the bone there, I wonder?

I wonder if those same people who are signing up to Facebook protest groups and marching on the French embassy (seriously?) would march on the Dail when the budget strips the nation of it wealth and hands it to banks and multinationals? I have a feeling I know the answer to that, and it is a cause of deep shame for this country. (edited to add: apparently there were only about 20 people making a spectacle of themselves there, so that’s something.)

Some good commentary at this blog post and by some of the commenters at this Slugger O’Toole news item.

A couple of screen grabs under the cut which illustrate my point above about the state of the Irish defence at that crucial juncture.

Phone wreckers are IDIOTS

Anyone who lived through the funny and frightening PSAs of 1980s Ireland should read this blog post.

I swear I would pay money to the person who would upload the PSA from the 1980s about phone vandalism. (Why phone vandalism? Was that the worst our budding criminals could come up with back then?)
It featured a song to the tune of Pink Floyd’s ‘Another Brick in the Wall’. The lyrics (as given in the blog post) went like this:

We don’t need your stupid messing,
We all want to use that phone,
Smash that phone on the doorstep (?),
Hey! Stupid! Leave the phone alone.

The best part was Bob Geldof saying angrily, “Phone wreckers are IDIOTS!” We would randomly quote that, but then we were easily amused back then.

Another favourite: “John, did you put the cat out?” In which John causes the house to go up in flames through unlikely circumstances and improbable stupidity.

Sadly, almost none of these are on Youtube.

Spoof of U2 by Irish comedians

The comedians involved are a group called Après Match. They started off in short sketches during and after Ireland’s matches (hence the name), and often mimicked the presenters and analysts.

“I agree with Bono.”

Lisbon treaty result strengthens constitutional democracy

In 1922, Michael Collins, Arthur Griffith and Kevin O’Higgins took a constitution jointly agreed on by anti-treaty and pro-treaty representatives and handed it to the British for deconstruction. Collins then called off his pact with de Valera a few short days before the elections and published the amended constitution on the day people were due to vote. Thus the constitution was deemed to be approved. Harry Boland commented that he felt like “two cents” for ever having believed that Collins was genuine; de Valera later wrote that trying to work with Collins on the pact was the worst day’s work he ever did for the Republic.

Such anti-democratic measures are routinely rationalised by media and historians as correct on ideological grounds. Thus, the government’s bullying campaign in favour of the EU constitution – repackaged as the Lisbon treaty – with its disinformation and deliberate lack of detail about the measures they demanded the people accept, is nothing new.

Fortunately, in 1937 the people approved a constitution drafted by de Valera and his team of legal experts, the first successful constitution in Europe to contain human rights provisions. [1] Therefore, with compliant European leaders refusing the people the chance to vote on Lisbon, the Irish government could not follow suit due to a provision of de Valera’s inconvenient document. In 2008, just as in 1922, the people were faced with a united front of Church, State and unions, with overt threats of what would happen should they dare to side with the lunatic/commie/terrorist opposition. The media are roaring against the audacity of the Mob, its function to justify European leaders (especially Sarkozy) who say the decision should be ignored; which shows how right the voters were.

[1] Gerard Hogan, constitutional lawyer, at the De Valera conference in UCD in September 2005.