A Nation revolts and online is the medium they are using !
I won’t get into the detail about Wednesday nights football match against France and the handball incident. The truth is I don’t really care much about football although it would be nice to see our Irish neighbours have a bit of luck for a change.
I can see their point though, clearly rules were broken and clearly this should not be allowed to happen.
What has happened since this however is truly amazing, in true Irish style the nation is revolting but this time rather than use traditional methods they are using online forums such as Facebook to gather momentum on their war against the French.
A Facebook Fan page was set up just hours after the event entitled
Petition to have IRELAND Vs FRANCE REPLAYED!!!
and in no more than 48 hours they have received over 201,000 fans, thats over 5,000 new fans an hour, over 52,000 people have clicked the ‘like’ button on posts from the fan page creator and over 6,000 comments have been left………… some going !
The page is now being used to rally support for protests outside the embassy and users are calling for a boycott of all french goods. One user has said ‘I’ll not be buying any baguette for a while, that’s for sure’ Many of the comments cannot be repeated !
As Facebook grows in users both in Ireland and globally people need to wake up to the power things like fan pages have, whilst the petition is not an offical one there is no way Fifa can ignore this…. Can they ?
FIFA have shown a remarkable ability to ignore many things aimed at improving the game of football.
FIFA have also shown a remarkable ability to ignore their own stance on fair play (why do I hear Ronan Keating everytime I write those words) by first seeding the playoffs and then by failing to codemn a very obvious infraction of their Fair Play doctrine.
Anyway, the game is done and dusted. A replay will not happen and we, the Irish nation, will feel agrieved at this injustice. With no replay coming, we will always have Paris.. something to moan and bitch about what could have been and god knows, we are damn good at it!!
If only Robbie or Duff had scored a second, if only if only if only…..
Frankly, the outpouring of this naive, some might say arrogant, “we’re a special case, replay the game” belief as football supporters across the world look on and question have any of these people seen a football match before (or more pertinently, the Republic’s game against Georgia in the group stages) is embarrassing from this Irishman’s point of view.
-1 to the online medium for making it too easy for cranks and half-wits to get a message across.
Perhaps the Irish should leave it as is.
This way they can ‘always have Paris’ an excuse to hate the French and always say they were robbed.
If they do get a replay and to be honest that is not likely, then the chances of winning are slim to none and even if they do win that match they won’t go far in the world cup.
My thoughts : Leave it as is and ‘always have Paris’