John Terry and Wayne Bridge: To shake or not to shake?

Despite the fact Manchester City made easy work of their game against Premiership leaders Chelsea and  irrelevant of the class, skill and footballing talent on show, the only real talking point to come out of Saturdays early kick off will be; should Wayne Bridge have shaken John Terry’s hand?

Within minutes of Bridge snubbing Terry in the pre match hand shake Sky ran the story as breaking news on their website and minutes later there was a Facebook group set up in support of Team Bridge – When I checked it already had in excess of 1000 fans.

The Manchester City player earlier this week quit the international side given the circumstances surrounding his relationship with the former England captain and so evidently there are still hard feelings between the two.

Many people believed the pair would cast their differences aside, act like professionals, shake hands and respect each other when it came down to it on the football field- Bridge and Terry had other ideas.

Terry, dubious as it was, did offer his hand to Bridge but the England left back duly declined the offer and continued along the line – the question is, was that the right thing to do?

Given all the hype surely the pair just want to give and forget the incident and get on with their lives – surely all this latest episode has done is add fuel to the fire – Sunday newspaper journalists up and down the country now have copy for tomorrow’s papers.

Bridge received a hostile reception from the Chelsea faithful – fuelled in no small part by his actions prior to kick off.

The actions of Terry are not defendable in any way, and the pair have made no secret of their hate for each other over the past few weeks. For me it’s an incident that is without doubt incomprehensible but private lives and football lives should be kept well apart – something the England manager Fabio Capello highlighted by sacking Terry as captain.

Craig Bellamy alluded to Terry’s irrational antics off the field in his post match interview (not sure he’s in a position to comment but that’s by-the-by.) One thing he did acknowledge is behind all the press he’s a class football player, they both are and after all its football that is going to suffer.

Terry did offer a hand and my only concern is that in a televised Saturday afternoon game in which many young children would be watching; was Bridge’s behaviour anyway to act as a talisman to sport and as a role model for kids up and down the country. “Daddy, why did Bridge just ignore Terry?”

Bridge certainly has taken it all to heart and one can only respect a player who has fought long and hard to salvage a tangible England career; yet is willing to give up all in the name of his pride and private life. But as true football fans would surely have watched the prelim to Sky’s coverage of the game in the hope the pair would cast their differences aside and for the good of football, shake and make up; that wasn’t the case and instead we have been left with an incident that will long be talked about, speculated about and thus only instigate more pressure on the pair, that quite frankly, need to get on with the job they are paid to do.

That aside, this small, irrelevant incident shouldn’t detract from the heroics of Carlos Tevez and the inspired performance of a resilient Manchester City side, which came from behind to beat Chelsea and throw the title race, once again, wide open.