15 Years On - And As Hungry To Succeed As Ever

Fifteen years on from the goal that catapulted him into the consciousness of the footballing world, Wayne Rooney recalls the afternoon he famously halted Arsenal’s 30-game unbeaten run, and outlines how the Blues can shoot down the Gunners once again this afternoon…

- Adam Clark

I went back home and just had a kick about where I’m from in Croxteth, just by a few garages with a few of the lads. We had a chat, played football and that was it, really, nothing special.”

It’s a story Wayne Rooney has told before - but not like this.

Just hours before this most unremarkable scene of teenagers shooting the breeze and scuffing their latest trainers on the back streets of a close-knit Liverpool suburb, one amongst them had stepped off the substitutes’ bench at Goodison Park and made Premier League history.

Rooney is discussing the evening of 19 October 2002, the date on which he became, hitherto, the youngest goalscorer in the competition’s history.

And not against any old opponent, either – against an Arsenal side flying high at the top of the table and unbeaten in 30 Premier League outings. It was a 90th-minute winner, no less.

Yet here in the shadows of his family home, just three miles from Goodison, Rooney was doing what those aged 16 years and 360 days normally do.

It’s an illustration of just how juvenile that afternoon’s hero was when commentator Clive Tyldesley instructed us all to “remember the name”.

However, it would be incorrect to conclude from such a tale that the boyhood Blue who still had a collection of Everton pennants on display in his bedroom window was somehow blasé about his achievement.