Wayne Rooney: My Decade in the Premier League by Rooney Wayne

Author:Rooney, Wayne [Rooney, Wayne]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780007462902
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 2012-09-13T00:00:00+00:00

The funny thing is, chatting to that lad on holiday got me thinking about the type of player I’d become, the type of footballer I was when I was a lad.

When I first started playing for Everton, I was dead raw. I was a hothead. I’d always lose my rag if things weren’t going well for me and in my first season I picked up eight yellow cards and one red. The first sending off was horrible. I came on as a sub against Birmingham City and picked up a pass, turned and ran at their defence. My touch let me down, it was too heavy, and as I tried to reclaim the ball, I lunged in for it as their centre-half Steve Vickers cleared it away. I couldn’t stop myself in time and I went through him, my studs cutting into his shin (the gash was so bad he needed 10 stitches afterwards, which I felt terrible about). I never meant to catch him; I was genuinely trying to get the ball. The ref didn’t see it that way though and showed me the red card.

The walk to the dressing room was a nightmare. The tunnel at Birmingham was in the far corner of the ground and it was miles away. The tackle had taken place in probably the furthest point away on the pitch and it took me ages to get there. All the Birmingham fans were giving it as I trudged back. When I got inside, it was the coldest dressing room ever, it was freezing. And sitting in there on my own gave me too much time to think – I was devastated because I knew that I’d have to miss the next three games.

At that time in my life, the flare-ups happened because of the adrenaline, the excitement that took me over whenever I got onto a footy pitch in front of thousands of fans. Everything was so exciting then that it was hard not to get carried away whenever I pulled on an Everton shirt. I remember clashing with the West Brom defender Darren Moore when we played them in the league. I was running down the wing, he was chasing after me. I stopped the ball dead; I could see that he didn’t want to come in too close to me in case I moved the ball past him. Instead he waited, standing off, so I put a foot on the ball – my hands on my hips – as he jockeyed me, forcing me to make a move. I could see he was thinking, ‘The cheeky git’ and when I poked the ball past him and moved away, he tackled me hard. I was being disrespectful, so I deserved it I suppose.

I could get above myself off the pitch as well. I hated being dropped. After a couple of games in the team, David Moyes named me as a sub and I was fuming afterwards; I sulked around the house when I heard the news.

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