If you’re not cheating you’re not trying hard enough, it’s not cheating if you don’t get caught, if you know how to cheat start now. Bending the rules has long been a celebrated part of athletics, yet there comes a point where it leaves the territory of competitive advantage and enters the realm of pro wrestling. One such moment occurred recently when France defeated Ireland to reach the World Cup thanks to a goal that involved two handballs, which is bad since soccer allegedly is not played with one’s hands (I thought a French player was offside as well, but once the ref ignores two handballs that’s no big deal, just like once police overlook a bank robbery you can’t expect them to notice the getaway car’s double parked).

Atrocious calls happen constantly in sports, and soccer’s no exception. A big part of the legend of the great Diego Maradona — for casual fans, think of him as a shorter, druggier Pele — involves the “Hand of God” goal he scored against England in 1986, where the referee failed to notice something picked up by pretty much everyone else on earth: he had punched the ball in the goal with his hand. Yet in that case the tainted score was followed by Maradona’s “Goal of the Century“, when he raced through seemingly the entire English team (including their bench players and coaching staff) and put another in the net. When the game ended with a 2-1 Argentina victory Brits everywhere were bitter, but that extraordinary second goal showed they’d been bested by a man on a mission (Maradona would take Argentina to the title and be named player of the tournament). They may have felt they lost unfairly, but deep down they suspected they were gonna wind up second-best that day regardless.

Whereas in the France-Ireland game it was a horrendous goal in extra time…then they played a little longer …then Ireland got to go home for a few years. Throw in that FIFA is acutely aware larger nations have more TV viewers than smaller ones (France: 65 million residents; Ireland: 4.4) and roughly a month before the playoffs began even implemented a new seeding system seemingly designed to ensure as many big boys survived as possible, and it was understandable there remains much anger over the result, with countless Hibernians calling for a replay of the match. Indeed, French ball-slapper Thierry Henry even supported the action (classily, he waited until FIFA ruled it impossible before publicly announcing this). So the luck of the Irish somehow failed to ward off this heartbreak, just as it allowed the Potato Famine, hundreds of years of English oppression, and the recording career of Enya.

And that’s that, proving once again that fair play is nice but make sure you secure the win before displaying it.

Incidentally, when you started typing “Thierry Henry” into Google, the option “Thievery Corporation” appears. I don’t think it’s a coincidence.

__ appears each Wednesday.

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