I Can’t Forgive Or Forget What Rooney Did!

I didn’t really want to write an article defending Liverpool fans but having seen so many Evertonians comparing Fernando Torres’s reception at Carraghers testimonial to Rooneys the other day it has to be said. Torres is a Spaniard, his boyhood club was Atletico Madrid to whom he stayed loyal to for 6 years before moving on for a few years to pick up some silverware and now he’s back at the place he loves the most. He has no loyalties to LFC. he owed them nothing as he was already a superstar before he went there, he went there purely to win trophies and then when it wasn’t happening he moved to an even better team to achieve these goals.

Wayne Rooney on the other hand was our hero, one of our own, blue through and through and he wanted the Everton fans to know this whenever he got the chance, the ‘once a blue always a blue’ t shirt, the interview after signing his new contract when he declared ‘if it was Real Madrid, Inter Milan or Everton it would be Everton every time. We could not believe what we had, i hate the man now but the happiness he brought me and every other Evertonian at the time i don’t think will ever be matched no matter what we go on to achieve without him, when i was walking out of the ground after that Arsenal match I felt on top of the world, what a feeling knowing we had this great thing after all our years of hurt and disappointment, and what made it all the more sweeter was the knowledge that he loved the club so much, we never had to worry about this one leaving because his blood is blue, he’s like a fan on the pitch living his dream, and what a player, you could see seasoned premier league defenders coming to Goodison every other week and were visibly nervous and scared of this snotty nosed kid from Crocky who was just too good for them, faster, stronger, more determined and us blues were just in heaven, the excitement he created was immense.

I remember the times he was on the bench and we’d be getting beat in a match and there’d be 20 minutes to go and he’d start warming up on the touchline, ‘Rooney’s gonna get yer’ chanted the Everton fans, and we knew we had a chance of getting back into the game no matter what because our superhero was on his way. So when he told us he wanted to leave barely a year into his professional career, when he handed in a transfer request and told his adoring fans he wanted to leave no matter what, this wasn’t just disappointment because we were going to lose a good player. This was absolute heartbreak. How could he do this to us after all he’s said? After knowing what it felt like when he was a fan on the terraces only a few years before when people like Jeffers and Barmby done the dirty on us? Our great hope, our potential saviour and the one who told us he’d choose us over anyone and loved the club blindly now wants to leave us and become the first Scouser in over 30 years to cross over to the other side and join Manchester United.

This was the ultimate betrayal.

He left our manager, our adoring chairman who always looked like a little excited kid when talking about him because he was so proud, and his fans completely dumfounded, shocked and shattered. It was like a nightmare that you didn’t want to come true but it had. And this wasn’t the end. He wasn’t done yet. Just to rub salt in the gaping wounds of everyone connected to Everton football club he comes back and kisses the Manchester United badge right in front of our supporters at Goodison Park after scoring a goal, dances in front of them and shouts obscenities at them. No class, no respect, no sympathy or acknowledgement for the hurt that he’d caused just a short time before. He wanted to prolong our agony and laugh in our faces when we showed him in no uncertain terms just how much heartache he had caused. Sure, he is still an Evertonian – you can’t just stop loving a club that you’ve supported all your life, he brings his children up as Everton fans and still looks out for our results, but this man has demonstrated time after time that he doesn’t care about our fans, he is heartless, spineless and to this day has never shown or spoken of an admittance of how wrong he was for doing what he done to my club.

Some say he was just ambitious, but i refer back to the person who many Evertonians keep comparing him to, Fernando Torres, who stayed loyal to his boyhood club despite not winning a single trophy in his time playing in front of his beloved fans, he wanted to win but he wanted to do it at his own club, for his own people and he tried for almost half of his career (best years) to do so before it became apparent he wouldn’t be able to reach goals in football unless he moved on.

So that’s exactly what he did, but he done it in the right way, he sobbed in his press conference when he broke the news that he was going to leave the club he loved. He didn’t move to a rival. And he certainly never returned in another teams colours and taunted the Atletico faithful. SoI have to admit, as much as it hurts me to say it, as I watched the videos and seen the comments off fellow Evertonians on Sunday afternoon singing Rooney’s name and fantasizing about him maybe returning to the club on a permanent basis, I felt sickened and for a short while, embarrassed to be a blue. I don’t think you will hear the Tottenham fans singing Sol Campbells name any time soon, nor will you hear the Barcelona fans speaking admirably about Luis Figo. And make no mistake about it, what Wayne Rooney did to our club and our fans was right up there in that same category.

For some reason most Evertonians are more forgiving than other sets of fans, I’m not sure if that’s a good thing or a bad thing. Maybe it’s just a quality that I don’t possess that I can’t forgive and forget that easily. But that man is the devil to me and he always will be.

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