Burton and Taylor try again!
The saga of the unhappy Roo and the ructions at the club which brought him to worldwide attention has variously been written up as a shame, a scandal, a disgrace, a mind-boggler and, more or less, the end of civilisation as we know it.
And I suppose if you were that innocent marsupial exposed to bright lights, loud music and simulated sex in a Dublin nightspot then you’d be entitled to take a pretty dim view of humankind.
But then, over in Manchester, a fabulously well-paid footballer made it known that he’d like to leave his present place of employment, presumably to become an even more fabulously well-paid footballer – before realising he could do that without having to move at all – and all of sudden it was ‘Skippy who?’.
Yes, we were all reduced to bit-part players in Wayne’s World this week and, though Ian Holloway’s uncharacteristic sense of humour bypass suggests I should feel otherwise, I have to confess the affair has me jumping for joy rather than hopping mad.
It’s at times like this that a man is glad he’s in the neutral corner.
It’s funny to think back four years to the last time Wayne Rooney courted major controversy for strictly football-related activities. You might recall that he’d injured his marsupial – sorry, I mean his metatarsal – in the run-up to the World Cup finals in Germany, causing the entire English nation to sink to its knees in desperate, beseeching prayer for the well-being of their golden boy.
Next thing we knew, he was being flashed a red card for planting a foot in the groin – or, as they’d say in rugby, the groin area – of Portugal’s Ricardo Carvalho, an incident which prompted your correspondent, who was present on that occasion, to fashion one of the few inspired one-liners of his career. If I might quote myself (and, indeed, I might): “Before this World Cup, people were worrying about how Wayne Rooney’s foot would stand up to a tackle but, instead, we ended up worried about how someone’s tackle would stand up to Wayne Rooney’s foot.”
No, I don’t write ‘em like that any more.
You will recall that Ronaldo’s sly wink added a spicy footnote to Wayne and England’s ignominy on that day, prompting many experts to muse balefully on the outright impossibility of the two ever playing together productively again. Ho hum. Two years later, they were celebrating a Champions League triumph in Moscow and now, two years further on, it seemed for a while this week that the two renewing their ties, in Madrid, couldn’t be entirely ruled out.
Until yesterday’s stunning ‘reverse ferret’, however, it was Manchester City who were the hot favourites to land the Roo in what would have been regarded as one of the most sensational defections in the history of the game.
But now that has been trumped by an even more unlikely transfer, the one which sees Rooney move from Manchester United to, um, Manchester United.
Hero to villain to hero all in the space of a couple of days – like Rooney himself, the Old Trafford faithful mustn’t know whether they’re coming or going.
Even before he had a chance to officially leave the place, United fans had turned on their erstwhile icon with a vitriol more suited to a man whose wife has ditched him for his best friend (or, more to the point, greatest enemy). While Rooney nursed a timely injury far from the madding Old Trafford crowd on Wednesday night, a tepid victory over Bursaspor was enlivened by the unfurling of banners which read “Coleen forgave you Wayne, we won’t” and “Who’s the whore now, Wayne?”
Then there was that midnight visit to the gates of Rooney Towers from a neighbourhood watch group styling itself ‘The Men In Black’.
According to one report, these concerned citizens carried a banner reading: “Sign for City and you’re dead.”
This was pretty rich stuff coming from the people who have been royally entertained by Rooney for the last six years and who generally have no qualms about disloyalty to a club just so long as it’s the kind that brought the young Rooney to Old Trafford from Everton in the first place.
And while I can well believe Alex Ferguson when he was says that he was dumbfounded to learn about Rooney’s desire to leave – he would have been losing the very best of what remains of a fast evaporating pool of talent at Old Trafford, after all – it ought to be remembered that Fergie himself wasn’t one to stand on ceremony when it came to moving on other big names at a time which suited him. Just ask Becks and Keano.
Anyway, now they want us to believe that all’s well that ends well. Yep, Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton are tying the knot again. Announcing the player’s new five-year contract yesterday, Alex Ferguson said that Rooney had apologised to the club for all the fuss and suggested that it would be advisable for him to the apologise to the fans too.
And so, after all the hysteria about player power and agents of destruction, it seems Fergie has won this battle hands down, even if it has come at a presumably hefty cost to the club in terms of Rooney’s mushrooming pay packet.
The cost in terms of lingering damage to dressing room morale will be harder to quantify and there’s still an argument for saying that holding onto their best player won’t be enough to paper over the cracks in the United squad.
And, before all that, we have to be convinced that, after so long in the doldrums, Wayne Rooney himself can get his mojo back. The battle is over but the truce could be an uneasy one.
- Contact: liammackey@hotmail.com
