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Fans Comment
Peter Fearon


Once a Blue; Now a Red — In our hearts....
2 May 2006

Evertonians should be above feeling joyful at Wayne Rooney’s injury on the eve of the World Cup. Really. We should be bigger than that.

We should be... but I for one am not.

I have to confess to a guiltless ripple of schadenfreude that fate has taken a hand and played such a potentially devastating blow both to England and the Fat Bastard. And I confess I am totally unmoved by all this pompous, pious, sanctimonious self-righteous rubbish to the contrary.

It’s not just that England contains so many players I personally despise — Gerrard, Owen, Beckhamm — to name only three. It’s that avalanche of hypocrisy among the soccer establishment the moment Rooney became a Manchester United player.

It’s easy to forget now that Rooney’s image when he was an Everton player was that of a talented but thuggish lout — the Kid from Crocky who didn’t have enough class to fasten his top button, tighten his tie and take out his chewing gum at a public event.

It was only when he became a Manchester United player — and immediately he became a Manchester United player — that the Football Establishment and the media nominated him Blighty’s Bulldog, that never-say-die icon of Ingurlund’s World Cup hopes. Had he and that skank he lives with undergone a makeover? No. So my delight is partly at the discomfiture of those who could not abide the idea that a potentially great talent could still both represent England and stay in an Everton shirt.

I am also happy to see all those idiotic “Ingurlund” fans from the southeast corner of this sceptered isle — who can’t hold their drink and have made us the Disgrace of Europe for their behavior — sniveling over Rooney’s injury. They’re the same people who pat their pockets after a Scouser walks by, who despise everyone north of Watford Gap and think civilization ends at the Cotswolds.

And then there’s the Likely Lad himself. I can hardly bear to look at him. I confess I laughed out loud when he missed that sitter against Chelsea on Saturday. I have not laughed so much since he "won" that loser's medal in the Cup Final. I know his departure was not only his fault. There can be no doubt that Rooney’s value was unscrupulously leveraged at the expense of his popularity.

I believe that Kenwright and Moyes recognized that Rooney was more valuable as a stripped asset than as a player. So Kenwright, in cahoots with Rooney’s corrupt agent, set up the initial offer from Newcastle which triggered the eventual deal with Man Utd. But still, while I have contempt for those who conspired to rob us, I have little sympathy with Rooney himself. He was a more than eager dupe.

First, players are rarely sold against their will and could have stayed if he had wanted to — and secondly, if he were not a willing, indeed an eager participant, he has had every opportunity to say so publicly since his transfer, which was one of the most currupt episodes in what the media refer to as the Premiership Era.

And look what he has become since his departure. Has he “developed” in a way he could not have done at Everton as the pundits proclaimed? Has he become, under the tutelage of Sir Alex and the companionship of his peers, “the finished article”? No he has not. He has become a truculent, petulant, belligerent, vicious, brutish bully. And happily, the new club he loves so well has profited not at all in terms of major trophies from his efforts — and neither has he.

We are currently mourning Brian Labone, a man from a different time admittedly, but in many ways like Wayne Rooney in that he was local lad, up through the ranks and an Evertonian through and through. I look at Brian Labone and I look at Wayne Rooney and the latter isn't fit to spit on Labone's boots, let alone shine them.

I know I shouldn’t gloat or luxuriate in his misfortune. I know I shouldn’t.

But I do.


Peter Fearon


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