Socceroos can be dirty rotten scoundrels, too

Perhaps we were all too quick to judge Thierry Henry by comparing him to Diego Maradona.

A new clip on YouTube shows three further instances of the Argentina coach using his famous 'Hand of God', for Boca Juniors, Napoli and the Albicelestes.



So while we might put Henry's handball down to a brain fade from an otherwise mostly exemplary fellow, here's proof that the incomparably gifted Maradona was also prepared to play outside the rules for the benefit of his team.

Selective violation of the laws of the game and its cousin, gamesmanship, is something Australia has come around to lately - my TWG colleague Jason Culina recently admitted he would have done the same thing as Henry and not even owned up to the handball, following on from Lucas Neill's confession back in 2006 had he reversed roles with Fabio Grosso in that infamous second-round match against Italy he too would have gone to ground to win his team a penalty.

I'm not so sure how easily that sits with most Australians, as one of the national character traits of our team sports is playing honestly. Being dishonest is regarded as anathema to who we are and how we want to see ourselves.

But in football, perhaps more than any other sport, we're realising that if we want to win anything we're going to have to start playing by the rather flexible ways of the rest of the world.

This volte-face has been accelerated in no small part by the resistance of FIFA, football's world governing body, to embrace technologies or enhancements that make the game fairer. It is one of the most bewildering mysteries of the sporting world that an organisation that so publicly promotes fair play is so singularly incapable of agreeing to anything that goes any way to ensuring it.

So while some of us might like to cling to the idea of the 'fair go', the reality is it's a relic of our football past.

Australia can dive, handball, simulate, appeal, hack and niggle as well as anybody, and we're doing it more and more simply because everyone else is doing it.

I don't like to see Harry Kewell putting his hand up to claim a corner kick when he had the last touch, or Tim Cahill remonstrating with the referee for obstruction in the box when he's been handing out more of his own touch-ups than the Maybelline girl at Melbourne Fashion Week, but it's an unfortunate symptom of what we have to do to win.