October 19 - ‘Remember the name: Wayne Rooney’

A FEW years ago now I turned up on a Saturday afternoon at Goodison Park expecting to see Arsenal outplay and certainly defeat a well organised and spirited, but nevertheless limited Everton team.

After going a goal down, the Toffeemen had managed to equalise through Tomasz Radzinksi and with ten minutes to go it looked like they were going to pull off a creditable draw against the gunners who were on a 30 match unbeaten run.

Cue 16-year-old Wayne Mark Rooney to enter stage left. Young Rooney was already being talked about on Merseyside as something a bit special but he was largely an unknown quantity elsewhere. Not for long, as it was on this day in 2002 that the Roondog scored his first Premier League goal.

A long ball was launched up to Rooney and he took it down with a great touch, turned, and with the Arsenal defence backing off, hit an unbeatable curling shot into the top corner to send Goodison wild.

Everton had won, Arsenal’s unbeaten run was over, and Rooney had arrived. Always searching for the sound bite, commentator Clive Tyldesley exclaimed: “Remember the name: Wayne Rooney!”

At the time he was the youngest ever Premiership goalscorer, but James Milner took that mantle from his later the same season, and James Vaughan, also of Everton has since broken the record again.

We left the ground that day buzzing and got into a taxi. The driver had a football phone in show on the radio and an Evertonian was already on the line declaring: “England, Euro 2004: Owen and Rooney up front!”

Oh how we laughed. He was good, we thought, but that was going a bit far. What did we know.

Here is the goal complete with Tyldesley’s commentary. For those of you who are Everton fans, look away now.