Oh righteous indignation, come hither till I have a word with you. Maybe it's a hangover from the economic catastrophe, but the country is falling over itself to put poor Thierry Henry in the stocks.

The Frenchman is public enemy number one, displacing Sean FitzPatrick and generic bankers. The national thirst is raging for a villain on whom to hurl hatred, frustration and blame. Leave the man alone. He knew not what he did, and he did exactly what anybody in his boots would have done. Yet he is being subjected to the most odious characterisation within and without the arena of sport – cheat.

The dreaded word is not just spoken, it is spat, wherever people gather, or the media disseminates. Cheat. It even sounds low, degrading, duplicit, indicative of a character that plumbs the depth of human depravity. Cheat. Cheat, cheat, cheat.

Last Wednesday in Paris, the Republic of Ireland soccer team was done a grave injustice. Henry handled the ball twice, assisting its passage to his teammate William Gallas, who scored the deciding goal of the tie.

Henry's intervention wasn't premeditated; it couldn't have been. His second touch is cited by many as the result of a cheatin' thought, processed in a nanosecond, as if the footballer had a brain as big as Garret FitzGerald's. The second touch was just as instinctive as the first. He reacted as most footballers would, and in nearly every case the foul would have been seen by the referee and a free out awarded. He wouldn't even have been booked.

But on this occasion the ref was unsighted and the linesman asleep and the ball hit the back of the net and Mon Dieu, they think it's all over.

Suddenly, Henry is lumbered with the C word. Well, who out there doesn't have a cheatin' heart? In the same game, Robbie Keane handled the ball on four separate occasions. Cheat. Other Irish players committed deliberate personal fouls on Frenchmen. Cheats. Nicholas Anelka engaged in serious high-grade cheating by diving, feigning a foul. Now that is the type of cheating that really must be stamped out of the game.

The most despicable cheating in association football involves fouling an opponent who is through on goal. This is called the "professional foul". Using the standards now being applied to Henry, it should be described as the "lyin' cheatin' thievin' foul".

Walk up to your local park this morning and see some players cheating, with either personal or technical fouls. It happens all the time, yet nobody is insulted by being described as a cheat.

Cheating is part of sport in general, and the various codes of football in particular. Why else are a referee and two assistants required? If there was no cheating, a timekeeper would do.

You want to hear about some cheating that would put mon ami Henry in the shade? Last September, at the start of the All Ireland football final, Kerry's Tadgh Kennelly deliberately assaulted Nicholas Murphy of Cork (Kennelly says he didn't go out to do injury to Murphy, but neither was he asking for a dance). There was much controversy, but nobody suggested it was a particular low form of cheating.

At rugby's Heineken Cup semi-final in Croke Park last April, Munster's Alan Quinlan tried to stick his finger in the eye of Leo Cullen of Leinster. Quinlan was banned, lost out on a Lions tour, but he wasn't called a violent cheat, an omission which might elicit righteous indignation from poor, put-upon Thierry, considering the innocuous nature of his own indiscretion.

Cheating permeates history. In 1982, Offaly's Seamus Darby deliberately pushed Kerry's Tommy Doyle to score the most infamous goal in Gaelic football and change the course of history, depriving Kerry of five consecutive crowns.

Nobody ever described Darby as a cheat or 1982 the year of the cheated All Ireland.

Christy Ring was noted for secreting sliotars on his person, which he would use to take quick frees, often on wet days, swapping a dry ball for the soggy one in use. This was described as gamesmanship. Anybody remember Ringy being described as a cheat?

Cheating is in the eye of the beholder. What if Robbie Keane had done as Henry did, and we won the game? Nobody would be calling Robbie a cheat. Any crazed contrarian pointing out that we had won unfairly would find their voice drowned out. The refrain on Irish airwaves would be, "the ball hit his hand but we deserved to win anyway".

So nurse your grievance, you are entitled to do so. Point a finger at Fifa, which made a mockery of its fair-play ethic by seeding the play-offs late in the day in order to queer the pitch in favour of big countries like France.

But back off with the insults. Henry may well be an arrogant so-and-so. Irrespective of what else he achieves, his career has now been blighted through sloppy officialdom and a twist of fate.

He could possibly be called a cheat on the basis of a crucial dive he took in a World Cup game against Spain in the 2006 tournament. He doesn't deserve to be labelled with that most odious term as a result of an undetected hand ball on Wednesday.

In fact, I myself am a worst cheat. I was allotted 850 words to defend Henry but I have now commandeered 904. Je suis un cheat. Branded forever more. Move over in the stocks, Thierry. Au revoir, cruel world.

mclifford@tribune.ie