Robbo

Wayne Looney

I’ve not much cause to go see young lads play footy but me nephew was playing for his local Saturday morning team last weekend so I thought I’d pop along.

First of all the playing surface was slightly less suitable than the Somme. It had more bobbles than your grandma’s cardy. Secondly there was a little knot of parents on either side of the pitch rooting for their little ones and as ever, there was a bloke who was really letting himself down.

He looked like a scalped hog, this bloke, and his gob flapped for 30 minutes like a bedsheet in the breeze. His kid, a half-decent player with boots the colour of kryptonite and hair so heftily gelled he could barely lift his chin to the horizontal, was called – get this – Anton. That’s right, he’d named him after the crap Ferdinand.

And this father bollocked his son’s every pass and tackle until young Anton tumbled like some jessie out of the Royal Ballet School over a non-existent limb and the fresh-face ref waved play on. Anton’s Dad went Fergie-coloured and blurted out a sentence of such invective I dare not repeat it on these pages. Suffice to say it was a fucking disgrace.

Of course, this was nowt compared to the effort put forth from the mouth of England’s finest current footballer. Wayne Rooney. I think, finally, we’ve had enough of him. Haven’t we?

If he’s not elbowing some unprotected opponent in the face, he’s telling brassic England fans to dtop booing him and his mates after they’ve turned out a performance that couldn’t have been lamer had they all stayed in bed for 90 minutes.he’s bawling down the lens of a camera like he’s in the middle of a bleeding war-zone and he’s just taken out the people who killed his family. And we’ve seen enough news on the telly recently to know what that looks like.

All this self-serving tosh about Wayne being a passionate footballer... unlike, say, that Ryan Giggs who clearly doesn’t give a toss about the game. And remember that Bobby Moore? Very few yellow cards... no f-words... He just couldn’t be bothered, could he? I’ve seen more passion in a haddock.

My mate points out that footballers are confusing passion with out and out fury. (And that doesn’t bode well for their missuses, does it. ‘I BOUGHT YOU SOME FUCKIN ROSES, RIGHT! COS I FUCKIN LOVE YOU, YOU BASTARD SLAG! HAPPY VALEN-FUCKING-TINE’S DAY!’ ’)

The mate in question is an Arsenal fan which brings into question his understanding of rage in a football context. I think he believes throwing a plastic cup on the ground is tantamount to Dr David Banner going green.

But I take his point. Cos who exactly is wild Wayne wailing at when he looks down a camera lens? And why would anyone condone such unhinged mania?

Note Carrick's expression - every bit of him's yelling 'aw don't do that you twat!'

And all this of course on the back of Richard Scudamore insisting that clubs, managers and players need to take more action to sustain the laughable Respect campaign. At the mo, refs are getting no protection from abuse whatsoever, least of all from the lumbering neurotics who select the teams or the Neanderthals who play it.

You might say Fergie got a touchline ban for calling Martin Atkinson’s impartiality into question. Except somehow the Govan Beetroot is able to talk to the bench on an absurd white phone and still give half-time team talks to spur his players on to, albeit very impressively, turn around a 2-0 deficit. How exactly then has his Puceness been punished?

Referees need to be supported very directly by the FA. When Clattenburg didn’t quite see the Rooney elbow v Wigan but gave a free-kick anyway, he should have been permitted a second look after the game. And then the Scouse Mouth would and should have got a three-match ban minimum.

But the FA say it was dealt with at the time. Well no it wasn’t. If new evidence comes up in an old court case you don’t say ‘well, yes, I know we got the wrong man but I think you’ll find the judge dealt with it at the time.’ It’s preposterous.

So if Scudamore’s serious about trying to repair the tarnished image of English football then I suggest he and his cohorts start today. Ban the toilet-tongued lout and tell him to learn how to talk to people.

And back refs when they dismiss players after they get called a cunt. Back them, back them, back them.

Refs can be helped by the FA allowing video evidence to be used to up or downgrade cautions and dismissals (including hopeless tumbles like Jagielka’s woeful plummet on Saturday). They should use goal-line technology immediately. All communication between players and officials should be directed through the captain.

And to be fair, they should give managers a bit of breathing space before they come off the park and talk hokum to some mike-carrying no-mark in the tunnel.

Me, I’d like to see Rooney off the England team-sheet n all. The Ghana friendly the other night suggests that he’s not as pivotal as he’d like to think in the national set-up and during the World Cup he couldn’t have hit an aircraft hangar with a carpet-beater.

It’s clear Wazza is a talented player. He’s one of the reasons people have been misguidedly optimistic about England’s chances in big tournaments. But until he can let his feet do the talking I don’t want to see his badly-shave bollock-headed Phil Mitchell-looky-likey face on the box again for a bit.

He’s an embarrassment waiting to happen. Even when he plays well he spoils it by being little short of a Friday night oik after his first ever half a lager.

'Fuckin' Ave 'Im Kai!'

And I’ve got a horrible feeling that when Kai’s playing his first competitive seven-a-side – probably on an immaculate green lawn amongst the dignitaries of downtown Didsbury la-di-dah – some generous volunteer official will have his ears bawled out by the fat slaphead Dad on the touchline who no one’s talking to.