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DUNNE: 'WE WERE CHEATED'
Dunne sits with Henry after the Republic are knocked out.
Republic of Ireland defender Richard Dunne is coming to terms with being "cheated" out of a place in next summer's World Cup finals.
The Republic lost a dramatic play-off against France 2-1 on aggregate on Wednesday night as a result of William Gallas' extra-time goal in Paris.
However, the Irish players were furious that Swedish referee Martin Hansson had not spotted Thierry Henry's handball before he delivered the decisive 104th-minute cross.
Dunne, who spoke to Henry on the final whistle, said: "He admitted afterwards he handled it, but it doesn't make me feel any better because we are not going to the World Cup finals.
"FIFA will probably be happy. Yet again the big decisions have gone for the bigger team.
"There has to be a case for matches of this importance for a fourth official to look at replays and get the calls right.
"We were cheated tonight."
Republic boss Giovanni Trapattoni admitted he would rather have suffered the heartache of penalty shoot-out defeat.
Trapattoni said: "I am not only disappointed, I am also sad. It is a bitter evening.
"It's a bitter situation. I would prefer to have gone out on penalties.
"I am sad because the referee had time to ask the linesman. I am sure he should have, and he could have confirmed it was handball.
"I am upset. We speak many times about fair play. I go to schools and speak about fair play. I speak with the young kids about sport. Its important in life.
"Everybody saw the game. You know what happened."
Sean St Ledger added he and his team-mates felt "robbed" by the manner of ther defeat.
St Ledger told Sky Sports: "We got robbed, you can tell by the boys' reaction it hit his hand blatantly.
"We feel cheated - we were the better team over the two legs, every football fan in the stadium will say we were the better team tonight.
"It's cost a lot of us our dreams - as a boy I used to dream of playing in the World Cup, and now I'm not."
And the 24-year-old, on loan at Middlesbrough from Preston, also called for video technology to be introduced to prevent such controversies in the future.
"I don't understand why we haven't got replays in this day and age," he continued.
"You can get replays within 10, 30 seconds and it would have helped today."
While St Ledger was critical of Henry for his part in the incident, he did not feel the forward's reputation in the game would suffer.
He added: "He's said it hit his hand accidentally but if you look at it you can clearly see it hits his hand twice.
"I'm not sure (his reputation) has been tarnished - it doesn't look great but he's got his team to the World Cup finals.
"If it had been one of our team we'd have probably done the same.
"The blame doesn't necessarily fall on him but he's handled it, everyone can see it around the world."
