The risk v reward for footballers cheating supplemented by the difficulties faced by referees in spotting cheats means that footballers do and will continue to cheat to gain a competitive advantage.

No it’s not sportsman like, and no you wouldn’t have seen Sir Bobby Moore sticking his hand out to control the ball. But there is much more at stake in today’s game of football and we are kidding ourselves if we think that it is simply “just a game” and not a billion pound industry where the top players earn huge sums of money. Henry did what most footballers would have done given the opportunity, not all but most. Acts of honest professionalism are few and far between in today’s game. This all means that the governing bodies, Fifa and UEFA, need to step in and make it much less attractive to deceive the referee.

The current line held by the governing bodies is much like saying a crime hasn’t been committed unless there was a policeman at the scene of the crime who saw exactly what happened. Only recently has this started change with the case Arsenal’s Eduardo da Silva (which in my opinion was sympathetic on the diver) but obviously they are not going far enough. More needs to be done to dissuade a player from cheating, fines and bans are probably the most likely but using the case of Ireland and France replays shouldn’t be out of the question where the act of cheating completely changed the outcome of the game.

The Ireland and France game also allowed the video referee debate to be reopened. Had there been a video ref the goal simply would not have stood and we wouldn’t have the mess that we now have. Even a goal line official would have helped but even he could have missed it if he had his line of view obstructed by the goalkeeper.

I haven’t heard a good argument yet why the video ref shouldn’t be introduced. Football wouldn’t suddenly become a boring topic of conversation just because it had now become fair. Referee’s will continue to make judgement calls that many fans will disagree with. There will still be upsets in FA cup David v Goliath games, Man City will still throw millions at players like Bellamy, and Jason Roberts will always struggle to finish tap ins.

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