WAYNE FINALLY LOSES HIS CHERRY
By
Mickey Blue Eyes.

Poor, poor Wayne Rooney. What a way to lose your innocence. Betrayed by the very people he thought would help him.

I don’t know, and couldn’t care less, which Sunday newspaper journalists reported on Wayne’s adolescent dalliances in what are quaintly called “massage parlours.” I scarcely bother with newspapers these days, daily, periodical or Sunday. I have little use for them. There are plenty of other sources for information, most of them considerably more accurate and a good deal less propagandist. Nor can I even begin to imagine the kind of mentality that would pursue and report on a youngster’s Rite of Passage. The lad’s private loss of his cherry is entirely his own business. I wish him good luck.

No, the most important questions in this are these: what kind of seedy individual could (a) order underling information clerks to follow an innocent teenager going peacefully about his life, and (b) behave completely without conscience in obeying the order. It took the trials at Nuremberg to finally enshrine the right, nay duty, of an individual to challenge any orders that any individual genuinely felt to be in breach of his own conscience. The logical conclusion is that the guilty media owners, editors, sub-editors and individual infoclerks therefore couldn’t care less what damage was inflicted on the youngster’s life and personal relationships by this kind of cheap sensationalism. It is a safe bet the same people would squeal loudly if the same treatment was dished out to THEM. There is only one worse type and that is the sort denounced by Southampton chairman Rupert Lowe last weekend – those who sell this kind of thing to the papers.

And make no mistake, both our local clubs have a couple of scurrying human vermin all too ready to make money by acting as information weasels. I draw to your attention the pinkies’ Christmas party scam of four or five years ago when some of their players indulged themselves in high jinks and promptly found themselves spread all over one of the Sunday rags. As if it mattered one iota to anyone except themselves and their families. That saga led to one local receiving £2000 for betraying the very players he was supposed to help. But doubtless you have your own similar story involving some other club or players. There’s nothing new about any of it. What is head-shaking is that the newspapers continue to produce this kind of dirt at regular intervals. Really, the excreta couldn’t exist without the aforementioned weasels.

The most contemptible whine you get from journalists in this kind of situation is that the subject “shouldn’t behave like that” and they wouldn’t get reported. So what makes THEM the arbiter of personal, harmless behaviour? They certainly don’t act on my behalf. And I reckon I’m on safe ground when I say I am willing to bet they don’t act on your behalf either. The fact is, the story has been around for a long time and everyone connected with the club knew it. One can only wonder if Ian Ross has had to add that load to his shoulders as well as the rest of the nonsense he’s had to deal with recently. That it didn’t get out earlier is probably a tribute to his ability to liaise with the media. (Those who tell you the media hate Everton Football Club simply don’t know what they’re talking about. Without Ian Ross it’s a safe bet matters would have been a good deal worse.)

So……are we supposed to be grateful to the guilty clerks for delaying the story? In Ian Ross’s professional capacity, probably yes. For us fans the answer is quite different and surely it is this – get fucked, guilty journalists, and take your information weasels with you. We don’t want you. You are not needed. You add nothing to the sport we fans maintain with our money and enthusiasm. If you were all herded into the Mojave Desert and nuked en masse tomorrow we wouldn’t miss you, not for a single second. The game improves in spite of you, not because of you. You are an obstruction to everything good and healthy the game has to offer. You are all hangers-on making a contemptible vicarious living off the rest of us. In short, go get a useful life and do an honest day’s work.

Sadly, it was of course all highly predictable once young Rooney got into bed with the Proactive agency and its spiv, Paul Stretford, and was foolish enough to “write” for The Sun newspaper. Few of us doubt Stretford and the rest of the creeps set up the whole wretched business. If he’s so “good” how come he hasn’t advised Wayne of the likelihood of local reaction to his contributing to the loathed Murdoch right-wing propaganda stable? Within weeks came the next step, the opening item above, and then a bid from Newcastle, a club some of whose directors, management and players are directly involved with Proactive. Then came the inevitable final step when the youngster is alleged to have said he wants to leave. At its centre, a bewildered young man with a once-in-a-lifetime great footballing gift, but seemingly with no ability whatsoever to reason for himself. The whole thing is absolutely rotten with institutionalized corruption and the stench of hypocrisy.

In other words it is a well-nigh perfect representation of a sport well down the road to self-immolation. When even Newcastle manager Bobby Robson utters blatant self-denial and willful ignorance, when even the game’s senior (and so-called “well respected” – but not anymore) figures behave thus it is surely time for us all to reassess our involvement with the professional game. Put bluntly, why should we give our money to these charlatans and liars?

In my other pieces on the subject I have made it clear that if Wayne Rooney eventually wants to leave then nobody should stand in his way. That is his prerogative, his freedom of movement. All of this of course depends upon honourable behaviour by all parties, himself included. But the fact is Wayne has involved himself with totally dishonourable and corrupt people at Proactive and in the media. He has been roundly betrayed. And if he thinks for one moment moving to any other club will make it any easier……………well, he couldn’t be more wrong. In fact it will get worse – much worse. Paradoxically, it will get worse the better he plays. He has seen nothing yet. If he had any sense he would give himself at least one full season at home before even beginning to consider a move. If he decided to stay he would be welcomed with open arms by success and heroes-starved Everton fans in a way he could never realize elsewhere.

Truly the saddest thing about all of this is just how predictable it all was. The sheer rottenness of the newspapers, particularly Murdoch’s shitehawks, is not new. We on Merseyside are well acquainted with their methods. Many people must have warned him what was about to happen. But it was his own free choice. Now he will have to live with it. That’s life. No use appealing to the “better instincts” of the media because they haven’t got any.

So Wayne Rooney has finally lost his innocence, in full public view and without the benefit or consolation of the kind of support he might have had. Now he REALLY is on his own. And he won’t be able to hide, not even on a football pitch, no matter how great he is likely to become.

The story is as old as the hills. There will be others in the future. But it’s a safe bet that is no consolation to one very lonely young man who has learned his first lessons in life the hardest way you can imagine.

Again, good luck, Wayne. Choose your friends more carefully in the future. If you have any common sense left, get rid of Paul Stretford and Proactive. They’ll destroy your life. (25/08/04)

M.B.E. Index

What Do You Think? e-mail bluekipper.com