Harrington: Golfers don't cheat (unlike French soccer players)
Padraig Harrington is an Irishman and a sportsman, so it's no surprise he has an opinion on France's controversial win over Ireland in the final World Cup qualifying match this week.
(If you haven't seen it yet, France's Thierry Henry used his hand to set up the deciding goal in extra time. With the goal, France earned a 1-1 tie, enough to get them into next year's World Cup and eliminate the Irish. You can see a particularly damning picture of Henry's handball here.)
At the Euro Tour's Dubai World Championship finale, reporters asked Harrington how he felt about Henry's handball considering Harrington plays a sport where players routinely call penalties on themselves.
"Golf has a different attitude," Harrington said. "If somebody makes a mistake and ... putting your hand out as a reaction is a mistake, the great thing in golf is if we do do something wrong, we hold our hand up and say, 'Hey, hang on a second, didn't mean to do that, sorry.' You go back and you take your penalty."
Soccer is obviously a different sport and Harrington said he understood that players don't call penalties on themselves. (Although Henry did say a rematch would be "the fairest solution" to the controversy.) It was what happened after the game that really irked him.
"Celebration of the cheating was particularly galling, and that's as far as it goes," Harrington said.
