The Football Association of Ireland yesterday confirmed that it had asked FIFA if the Republic of Ireland could be found a place in the World Cup in South Africa next year. A statement on its website read:
"The Football Association of Ireland today (November 30) confirmed that it attended an hour and a half meeting, at its request, with Mr Sepp Blatter, President of FIFA on Friday in Zurich. A lot was discussed at the meeting and at one stage the FAI asked if Ireland could be accommodated into the World Cup 2010.
"Other suggestions were also made to mitigate against further occurrences of such incidents, including the use of additional goal line assistant referees for FIFA international matches, further use of video technology for matches at the highest level, stronger provisions to discourage players from engaging in such blatant breaches of the Laws of the Game and provisions to strengthen referee selection for such important matches."
Sepp Blatter said: "I will bring it to the attention of the Executive Committee." The committee meets on Wednesay prior to Friday's World Cup tournament draw.
Any action to accommodate Ireland would be an astonishing move. The precedent would leave tournaments open to all sorts of claims and counter-claims in the future.
Blatter pointed out that Costa Rica also believe they were unfairly denied a place in the finals. In their case it was because of an offside goal from Uruguay, so they would also have to be acknowledged if extra places are discussed.
It is sad that Ireland missed out because of Henry's cheating and officials that missed the offence, but moves to change tournament set-ups must be avoided. The real way forward is to put in place systems which avoid such errors in the future.
