CASTING THE ROONS.
By
Mickey Blue Eyes.

"A man's character is his fate."
HERACLITUS - On the Universe, fragment 121.

"There is no fate that cannot be surmounted by scorn."
ALBERT CAMUS - The Myth of Sisyphus.

Whither Wayne Rooney?

Best to ask the question now, before the season starts. Best too not to get too precious about it. It's a game of football, that's all. And the boy himself is, well, a boy of just sixteen. Anything can happen and probably will. Given the talent, the rest is up to him. If he makes it and stays with us we will of course be delighted. For if there is one thing of which there can be no doubt, it is this: He's one of us, an Evertonian through and through. If he succeeds, we can all feel a part of it. But that may not be enough. There will be other factors. That is the entropic way of things.

First, the raw human material, the boy's footy talent. It isn't even in question amongst those who know and love the game. The great Harry Catterick once said, "You don't have to look for the good ones, they stand out." So it is with Wayne Rooney. Once he's into his stride in a game you would have to be thick or willfully ignorant or merely antagonistic not to recognise what you see. Just saying he's exceptional falls a long way short of his apparent abilities. Nobody would quibble that he's a natural footballer. In my years of watching the game I have never seen anybody of a similar age with quite so much of a natural gift. The nearest I can quote is Jimmy Greaves, but he was a different type of player. Sustaining it will be quite another matter. Right now I'll settle for Segovia's famous observation on John Williams' wonderful guitar playing, "His brow has been touched by god." Potentially, Wayne Rooney is that good.

Don't bother either comparing him with any other promising young player we have had. Some untalented cheap-jibe media hacks have already filled empty tabloid spaces with equally empty-headed vacuous claptrap about Cadamarteri, Branch, Jeffers, Ball, Kenny and others. All of those were tremendous young players with obvious potential. They all failed for different reasons. It is a familiar story in all sports, so nothing new there, then. Rooney is quite different. Here's why.

When you first see him in a match you wonder what all the fuss is about. He's not very tall and he doesn't do anything flashy. In fact he doesn't do anything flashy throughout. Everything he does is measured, even the things he does in a microsecond. In the early stages of the games I saw him play he measured his opponents all the time. As the game went on he got better and better. When his play reached its peak it almost looked as though he could do what he wanted, when he wanted. In short, he has the natural ability to pace himself. It is one of those things you simply can't coach into a player. Oh sure, you can coach an individual when and when not to go for a ball, when and when not to go on a run so they preserve energy. You can improve individual fitness. But pacing an entire game is a completely different matter. Only truly great players can ally that to their other natural talents.

Given that, it is no surprise to see him apply himself to exploiting opposition weaknesses wherever he detects them. He is merciless, another trait in great players. For example, Alan Shearer has this in spades. Lose Rooney for a second in the penalty area and the odds are he will make you rue the day you stepped onto the same pitch. He never stops, and he is "greedy," which is why he misses more than he scores. One day he might well invert the proportion and create some kind of a record.

His physique is as precocious as the rest of him. As I said, he isn't tall, but he seems in perfect proportion for his height, a natural football athlete. The muscles, strength and weight are in all the right places, legs, hips and shoulders. The most obvious thing about his appearance is his neck. It looks to have the strength of a bull. Nobody is ever going to knock him off the ball easily, not unless he loses enthusiasm. This is a player with the pugnacity and killer instinct of a cropped-head champion middleweight boxer.

He has an array of ball playing techniques which aren't immediately apparent. You have to put them in the context of his overall approach to an individual game. He does what he does when he has to and not more. There isn't much room in his concentration for what he sees as a waste of time. It either works or it doesn't. If it doesn't work against one player it might well work against another. This is professionalism of the highest order, in any sport, in any discipline. In this regard I remember an interview with Greavsie in his best years at Tottenham. Without a trace of pretension or unjustified arrogance he said, "Basically, when I take the ball into a man I don't know myself which way I'm going to go." Anybody who has played the game at any level will recognise the sheer pragmatic professionalism in that remark. It is also one of the reasons we love the game's spontaneity. Rooney doesn't dribble or ghost past a player in the fashion of Alex Young or Greavsie, he gets past him in any way suitable.

For one so young he has conquered most of the basic skills in a way we all used to dream about when we were kids. If the ball gets played into him at almost any height it almost always ends up at his feet, ready to go. He is hardly ever in two minds about what to do. He does it first and takes the consequences afterwards. One of his favourite moves appears to be a roll to his left with the defender immediately behind him and breathing down his neck. The taller and stronger the defender, the better. Rooney has a low centre of gravity which enables him to stay on his feet more. I can't wait to see him matched with Rio Ferdinand if the opportunity ever presents itself.

He takes free kicks with the kind of self-belief which beggars his years in the same way. Thirty metres out and he'll STILL hit it with every expectation of scoring. In the FA Youth Cup semi-final at Tottenham he did just that, it bounced back to him and he smacked it home with the kind of arrogance which said, "That's where it should have gone in the first place." In the home leg he hit one from just beyond the centre circle and it screamed within millimetres of the crossbar with their 'keeper nothing but an apprehensive spectator. Prior to taking it he waved away one of our midfielders who was shaping to do the job. It wasn't a dismissive wave, merely a gesture of common sense accepted by both players. He could do it better and they both knew it, no sweat, no offence. It was an impressive moment. You really had to shake your head to remind yourself of his age.

It is this combination of self-belief and ability which seems to power him forward. The two don't always go together. When they do, you finally understand what Segovia meant. You have to treasure it while you can, while it is there. Fate can whisk it away at any time for any reason.

The sum total of all this is a young player with seemingly limitless potential. It isn't a matter of silly hype, it is a matter of straightforward fact. In the end, if he is good enough, all things considered, he will make a great player. All he and we can do is play our respective parts at this stage of his career.

For a start we can dismiss the media to the periphery, honourable exceptions apart. For most of the media are a collection of dimwits with no interest in betterment of the game or honest commentary. For them the only thing which matters is their phony "career" based on lies, manufactured rumour, half-truths and vicarious jeering. Our game survives in spite of them, not because of them. We don't need them or their opinions. We never have. It follows that anything the vast majority of them have to say about Wayne Rooney isn't worth a fart in a force 8 gale. Football really is the People's Game, whatever the present temporary state of ownership, whatever the conscienceless media say. But it would be wise to prepare yourself for continuous gossip.

Then we can get our own house in order. Whatever the temptation to claim otherwise, Wayne Rooney is not a messiah because in football there is no such thing. I hope our club never ever falls to the level of other clubs who have peddled this muck about a player or a manager. It is a game, not a religion. Any other approach leads to disaster. Anybody who places a ridiculous weight of expectation on the boy's shoulders should expect no mercy from the rest of us if he eventually falls to the caprice of fate. I am happy to say I haven't seen too much evidence of this so far, mainly because most of our fans haven't yet seen him. For us, the last five years have been a pretty desperate experience which has also been cathartic. It means we take each game and each player on a match-to-match basis. This is healthy and much more preferable to the dessicated counting machines of, say, Leeds United and others. At least it is when it doesn't spill over into constant misery-mongering and whining. Wayne Rooney is a potential sports hero, not a life hero. There is no need to make of him what he is not.

If luck is on his side, injuries notwithstanding, much of the rest will be down to his inner character. Nobody can see that except young Rooney himself. Like all sixteen years old adolescents he has a lot to learn about himself, about life and about the sport he wants to make into a career. But all of it will be governed by his own special set of personality characteristics and how he decides to use them. Once the hormonal and idealistic whirl has settled he will come face to face with certain hard-edged realities. I hope he handles them better than Michael Ball and Francis Jeffers, both of whom palpably mistook their own egos for maturity. The signs are that he will. He looks and plays in an altogether different way. And that's about as much as we can reasonably guesstimate.

Somewhere in the equation we have to build in the affects of David Moyes and the other players and the owners of our club. And money. Like it or not, and I positively despise it, manipulative money matters temporarily rule the roost. It won't always be so but you'd have to be an idiot to disregard circumstances.

Where Moyes is concerned there is little doubt he has made a wonderful start and done and said all the right things. He will know better than anybody else, certainly better than you or I, what a young talent he has on his hands. He has his own crystal-clear approach to how he gets things done and that includes how he deals with Rooney. In my view, if the youngster is good enough he is old enough. Then again, I am not a professional football manager and I do not see him in training every day to assess his playing standards or his attitude. I am an opinionated fan, nothing more. So, like everybody else, I have to assume the manager is right in how he deals with his players. In turn, there won't be many seasoned pros who won't want to see the youngster succeed; like our infamous tiny minority of whining fans there may be an exception to this. If there is then I am quite confident Moyes will sort them out as he did with Blomqvist.

You can't talk about owners these days without talking about money, transfer values and playing assets and all the rest of the god-forsaken MBA shite. That being the case, if you agree with that approach to the game, then you can't rightly moan if our financial circumstances dictated a soul-less sale at any given moment. Or if young Rooney made enormous earnings demands, didn't get them and then moved on. As the Rio Ferdinand muck made clear, every player and every club have their price in today's game, no exceptions. Fact. Get used to it or change it.

My instinct, my hope, is that Wayne Rooney will become a great player and stay with us. I haven't the slightest idea why I say this, especially given the game's status and our current place in it. True, it may be wishful thinking. Whatever, it is distinctly better than a hysterical display of truculent paranoia. As I said, it's a game and nothing more.

So here's to Wayne Rooney, The Duke himself, the Roonster, Roons and any other nickname the fans can conjure from their bottomless imaginations.

By all means cast the runes and see which way they fall. Just remember he's only sixteen. (25/07/02)

What They Say About Our Wayne                                         Click Here for EXCLUSIVE Everton News

Blue Kipper Headline 2 Years Ago Wayne Rooney - Remember his Name

Wayne Rooney is a 15 year old forward. He is going to be a star. Remember you heard it on Blue Kipper first. He scored 8 goals for Everton's Under 17's side last season, even though he is a year younger than the rest of the squad. Along with Scott Brown, & Sean Doherty, Rooney has been selected for the England U17's for a tournement next month. He and is the youngest member of the squad. If you get a chance go & watch the games. (20/06/01)