As Ireland fans, politicians and players continue to wage a war of words on the injustice dealt to them by the hand of Thierry Henry in Paris on Wednesday night, let's remember one thing. Henry's got form for this kind of thing, right Rangers fans?

Just over two years ago in November 2007, Rangers were at the Nou Camp looking for an impossible result against the Catalan giants. That task was made all the more harder after just six minutes when Henry got on the end of a Lionel Messi header back across goal to put the hosts in the lead.

Yet like his deft touch at the Stade de France to set up William Gallas, Henry had bundled the ball over the line with his hand. He even came out and admitted it afterwards, just like he did after the Ireland game. Does lightning strike twice? Or is the Frenchman one of football's great chancers?

Barcelona had been mocked for failing to break down Rangers at Ibrox in a 0-0 draw earlier in the 2007 Champions League. They were under pressure to win at home. Henry dispelled their fears with his arm - accident or no accident - and didn't think twice about celebrating the goal.

The enormity and significance of the two situations differ of course, but is it one of the game's great coincidences that Henry used his hand for a goal two years ago? In 2007 he said it was the referee's problem for not noticing what had happened. And so the world forgave him. Fast forward two years to Saint-Denis and the post-match script is the same.

"I'm not the referee," Henry told journalists as the Irish nation erupted. "The ball hit my hand, I will be honest.

"I told [Richard] Dunne, he said the same to me, 'you're not the ref'. That's why the players did not come to me, that's why they went to the referee."

Former colleagues of the ex-Arsenal man have leapt to his defence, saying that he's as honest as they come. But his attitude after both games was that he knew fine well what he was doing, but as he had gone unpunished, the aggrieved just had to accept it.

The honesty and sympathy Henry tried to convey after the Ireland match didn't match up with his actions on the pitch. If he knew he had done wrong, he could have admitted his foul and protested along with the Irish to the referee that the goal shouldn't have stood. Discounting that - owing to the pressure on the French to get to the World Cup and the relief he must have felt - he could have at least shown humility and turned away from the celebrations that ensued.

The course of action the great humanitarian Henry took of course was to wheel away with a cheeky grin across his face and run towards the mob of his jubilant team mates. He, as their on-field leader, seized the opportunity he had been given to win at any cost and ran with it. Noble Henry, the captain, the leader of his team, endorsed what he had just done. Because he had gotten away with it, again.