Le Bleus, Le Blah, Le Augghhh

The problem with the World Cup actually playing out is that all the possible winning combinations and strategies we've dared to hope for over the intermediary four years are proven to be just that — hopes and dreams. Just ask Australian fans still traumatised by the horror show that was the opening match against Germany.

But if there's any consolation that can be taken (and if there are any jokes that can be made), it's that at least Australian fans aren't French. They weren't forced to watch their national team embark on tragicomic, farcical, and downright mortifying World Cup campaign. That. Just. Kept. Getting. Worse. Indeed, every time I went to put pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard) to write something about the French team over the past couple of weeks, something more incredible happened.

Although skewering mutual assured destruction with nukes flying through the air around the world, Albino Black Sheep's End of the World cartoon [http://www.albinoblacksheep.com/flash/end] could just as easily be summing up the French team's campaign: their lives are on the line and they need to take action. Their response? 'But I'm le tired.'

Warning signs were sounding and questions were asked of coach 'Everyone Hates' Raymond Domenech's abilities to steer the French football ship 18-odd months ago, when the French failed to make it out of the group stage at Euro 2008. But it was the team's lacklustre World Cup qualification form that saw them scrape into the finals at the last possible moment courtesy of the controversial and blatant Thierry Henry handball that attracted the most attention. The Irish were outraged and demanded a replay, but the result stood: Ireland missed out, the French didn't; conspiracy theories abounded.

You'd think the French would have wanted to come out firing at the World Cup to prove they were able to win with skill rather than hands of God. The former world-champion Le Bleus didn't appear to think so, though, and seemed disinterested and disorganised each time they took to the pitch. Not only did they fail to make it to the round of 16, they came last in their group, winless and with a paltry one point.

My lovely Irish friend Lewis Brien, who's recently upped stumps and moved to Australia, said he expected the French to make it to the last eight or four. 'But in secret,' he says, 'I hoped they won the bloody thing so we could have the bragging rights.'

Instead the former World Cup champs had the horror campaign that went from self-inflicted bad to self-inflicted worse. One player was sent home for dissent, the rest of the team refused to train in protest, there was a public training altercation and near-mutiny which saw the players storm off and sit, pouting, on the bus. Captain Patrice Evra was dropped and then eluded to future explosive revelations — 'My coach forbade me from speaking but France will soon know the truth' — which indicates that this more soap opera than a soap opera farce is far from over. Add in a juvenile refusal by the Domenech to shake the South African coach's hand at the end of the match and, well, it just about sums up the fundamental and they've-only-themselves-to-blame issues of their campaign.

Whether it was karma or the result of being overpaid and underhungry, the French played as though they knew they shouldn't have been (or didn't want to be) there. Australians can console themselves that the diving Italians went on to become champions of the footballing world (and then got caught up to by karma at this World Cup, not even making it out of the group). The Irish? They were denied a chance to play by a team that didn't want to and that turned out to be the laughing stock of the competition — there's no consolation there; only salt rubbing in the wound.

Over 14,000 people joined the 'Make Les Bleus walk back home from South Africa' group on Facebook and Brien notes that regardless of match outcomes, the Irish would have trained and played their boots off. 'I am sure as hell if Ireland had been there, there isn't a day of training we would have missed, there isn't a team we would have rolled over for, and the last thing that would have happened was a player revolt,' he said. 'The whole French thing is just gutting, angrifying, and depressing. Nothing good came of that handball for anyone.'

I couldn't agree more. And as the post mortem continues back in France — Henry is meeting with President Sarkozy and Evra will issue his apparently explosive tell-all — the only way I can sum up the French campaign is Le Bleus, Le Blah, Le Augghhh.