Nathan Collins on Henry '09 - 'I was at Cheerios gig!'

The still photo of Thierry Henry controlling the ball 'basketball style' is burnt onto the retinas of most Irish football fans, though Nathan Collins was otherwise disposed for most of the evening.

The 22-year old defender only caught sight of Henry's famous act of larceny thanks to the big screen at the train station on the way back from a ChildLine gig.

"I was coming back from a Cheerios concert, if you can remember them, the charity ones," Collins told the assembled media at today's press conference at Abbotstown.

"I was with my mam and older brother. We were walking back to the train station and walking on the screen there. There was a big crowd of people waiting for the train watching it and, yeah, everyone was fuming. I just remember rowdy people, that's all I remember.

The ChildLine concerts, sponsored by Cheerios, ran between 1997 and 2014 and Collins struggles to recall the full line-up from the '09 event.

"All I remember is JLS!" [Wikipedia tells us that Westlife, The Saturdays and The Script were among the other more forgettable acts that played the O2 on the infamous night of 18 November 2009.]

Thursday's game doesn't mark a return to the precise scene of that particular crime.

Stade de France has been block booked by the oval ball crew for the next month and so Ireland are heading across the city to the Parc des Princes, the national team's regular home until the mid 1990s and still home to Paris Saint Germain. Irish fans of a much older vintage than Collins have enough bitter memories of injustice at that venue too, notably from the 1982 World Cup qualifying campaign.

The match in Paris is the first installment of a critical two-part window, which could land the final blow on the embattled Kenny regime or