Football supporters dressed as Irishmen cause havoc at training session
French fans take the Mick
Friday November 13 2009
IT SEEMS Canal+ does comedy as badly as RTE. But even by French standards this was high farce.
Police evicted a mob of faux Irish fans for causing hassle during a training session in Clairefontaine.
Frenchies imitated drunken Irish fans by shouting and causing havoc at the ground.
The fiasco, part of a protest, will strengthen the resolve of true Irish fans who will make plenty of noise on Saturday.
The activists were from Canal+, a French TV station which did not gain the rights to show the game.
Disguised as Irish fans, the French mob acted in a manner that required police intervention.
The French team can expect similar scenes on Saturday when they experience the hostile atmosphere of Croker.
This is just the latest controversy caused by the French in the lead up to the World Cup playoff. Coach Raymond Domenech had already caused a stir when he urged French football fans to snap up all the tickets to the Paris leg to limit the numbers of Irish at the game.
The French Football Federation reacted to this by not selling tickets for that game online or over the phone. It also emerged that the federation were seeking an inflated price for the rights to show the Paris game. The FFF wants €1.5m for the TV rights with RTE understood to be offering around €600,000.
