What goes around comes around – even for Harry
The Socceroos’ World Cup campaign hangs by a thread, cruelled by red cards in consecutive games to Tim Cahill and Harry Kewell.
The performance against Ghana was a drastic improvement on the effort (or distinct lack thereof) against Germany in Durban and the 10 men who remained on the field at Royal Bafokeng can carry their heads high, especially Mark Schwarzer and Luke Wilkshire, even if their instincts right now are to slump their shoulders through exhaustion and disappointment.
Much fuss has been made of Kewell’s send-off, which the Twitterati and green-and-gold patriot militia deemed harsh but to thine eye, Mark Shield’s and many others', it looked like the only decision Roberto Rosetti could conscionably make.
It was a clear goalscoring opportunity. The indiscretion was plain.
Whether it was a deliberate handball only Kewell knows but, even though the ball struck him on the upper part of his right arm near his shoulder, that arm moved well away from his side before it was struck, suggesting at the worst premeditation, at the best carelessness for which Kewell must accept fault.
Rosetti, like all referees with a FIFA badge, is instructed to consider “movement of the hand towards the ball (not the ball towards the hand)” and “the distance between the opponent and the ball (unexpected ball)”.
In both respects, Kewell’s case doesn’t look good. He moved towards the ball and he was well away from it when it was struck.
The referee could have given the player the benefit of the doubt but chose not to. He was convinced he’d seen a deliberate handball and adjudged it an “unacceptable and unfair intervention that prevented a goal being scored”.
Them’s the breaks in international football and until such time as the rules change there’s no point complaining about it.
The thing that concerns me here, and I think it needs to be mentioned, is Kewell has been very remonstrative in the wake of his dismissal that he would never deliberately handball but he cannot put his hand on his heart and say he never pushes the limits of the rules or tries to gain an advantage unfairly.
He told me himself back in March that he readily appealed for corners when he knew he’d had the last touch of the ball and, even more remarkably, would not criticise Thierry Henry, whose infamous double-handball against the Republic of Ireland at the Stade de France unjustly qualified France for the World Cup.
In fact he said he couldn’t rule out doing the same thing as the much-maligned Les Bleus striker in the right circumstances.
“In that situation, I don’t blame Henry for doing what he did,” he told me. “It was an instinctive reaction. You’d be lying if you said you wouldn’t do it in the same situation.
“It’s a heat-of-the-moment thing you do. If you get away with it, you get away with it.
"He’s not the first person who’s done it and he’s not going to be the last. It’s just that he’s done it and the stakes were high and with the video footage he’s got caught red-handed.”
So with a startling admission like that, should we really take at face value Kewell’s new assurances he wouldn’t do such a thing; that he couldn’t possibly thrust his arm out in the “heat of the moment” in front of Jonathan Mensah to block a certain goal at the right post?
He’s contradicted himself.
Kewell, as attested by that story published by The World Game, openly admitted to “bending the rules” in his career to gain an advantage and conceded he would deliberately handball if necessary.
His rationale?
That some decisions go your away, others don’t and “what goes around comes around”.
His words. Not mine.
At Royal Bafokeng it certainly came but it came back to bite him with a vengeance.
Can he really complain?
http://theworldgame.sbs.com.au/jesse-fink/blog/1009751/What-goes-around-comes-around-%E2%80%93-even-for-Harry