Does Ireland have any chance of competing in World CUp 2010?

After the contentious France vs Ireland play-off game, the news that a replay was not possible, despite Thierry Henry's comments seemed to rule out Ireland's involvement. That the French players were hardly concerned about the aftermath, whereas the Irish players were barely fit to play says a lot about the depth of feeling on the issue.

Today Fifa has revealed that the FAI has requested that Ireland receive some kind of wild-card entry into the final. The first indication that it will be rejected came when Sepp Blatter surrounded the issue with technical discussions in an interview yesterday. The injustice done to Ireland was considered barely a footnote compared to increasing the number of officials or using technology - considerations that may stop the issue re-surfacing but are hardly the point for Ireland.

The final nail was the blurring of the issue by suggesting that Ireland aren't the only country that has been hard done to and if Ireland are discussed Costa Rica's concession of an offside goal against Uruguay must also be considered. And after that I guess that any and every contentious decision will be dug up to fudge the issue to the extent that it becomes impossible to suggest anything other than 'what goes around comes around'.

Q. Does Ireland have any chance of competing in World Cup 2010?

A. No.