24 November 2009 ~ On the WSC messageboard Hartley Sebag-ffiennes gave vent about Thierry Henry's handball against Ireland.

L'affaire Henry has dragged on noisily and tediously for some days now, like a Yorkshireman dragging a wooden cart across the cobbles loaded with Hovis, clogs and dripping. Rank and foul has been the air with the dissonant verbal defecation of the halitosis-ridden uncouth, complaining that in the course of passing to team-mate William Gallas there might have been some trifling brush between his palm and the ball. An injustice has been done, they bleat. As one, they cry "andball", so much so that in some areas of the country, roadsweepers have been pressed into double shifts in order to sweep up the countless dropped aitches. What these poltroons fail to understand, however, is that this debate is about a great deal more than an unimportant manipulation of a sphere. This whole affair is transcendent. It is about culture, honour, architecture. It is not so much about the contact of a man and animal hide but truly, what separates man and the beasts of the field, or certain of the baser nations for that matter. Read more

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