Soccer: Scouse 'banter' consigns Rooney to depths of hell

Just look at what he'd done to them.

He'd single-handedly won them the FA Youth Cup, become the second-youngest player to represent them, the youngest player to score for them, given them a famously unlikely victory over Arsenal with his first league goal and then earned them 30 million ($78.6 million), which went a long way to securing the financial stability of their club, not to mention giving David Moyes funds to take them to the dream-like position they are currently in.

Is it any wonder that Everton booed Wayne Rooney to the lowest depth of hell yesterday?

Whatever, it must have seemed like an awfully long time for Rooney since he wore that infamous T-shirt bearing the words "Once A Blue, Always A Blue".

Except Rooney has not even been on this planet "an awfully long time", and it was easy to forget that it was a 19-year-old they were chanting about in the coarsest manner imaginable.

"He's a man, he can handle it," the football world assured us as the hype surrounding the teenager's return to his own backyard degenerated into something Don King might even have shaken his head at.

Outside the ground, toddlers wore shirts emblazoned in Rooney's old No 18 with the moniker "TRAITOR" below it, while a council estate wall next to Goodison had "ROONEY DIE" scrawled across it. Friendly Scouse banter - don't you love it?

The cameras and journalists certainly did and so, in truth, did both sets of supporters, who sensed that here was a sporting occasion with a difference to boast they'd attended. As Rooney was walking back to the changing rooms after warming up he went past a seemingly well-heeled couple standing at pitchside, and both man and woman threw abuse at the young man. He reacted - of course he did, they were yards from his face. But fortunately, for the couple more than anyone else, he was hauled away.

It was the perfect pre-match limber-up, for the vocal cords if not the competitors.

The supporters' association had instructed the home fans to treat Rooney like any other player returning, although Rooney will never be "any other player".

It did at least split the crowd in two, into the "Boo-neys" and the "Who?-neys"; those who taunted him versus those who ignored him.

Unsurprisingly the "Boo-neys" won, raising a deafening chorus of hisses every time the boy had the audacity to look at, never mind kick, the ball. Missiles rained down - bottle tops, mobile phones and, most bafflingly, the object that hit Manchester United goalkeeper Roy Carroll - while the boisterous away support kept their end of the bargain by continually chanting the local hero-turned-villain's name.

At times everyone forgot themselves and fell silent to admire Rooney's skill - once with a half-volleyed cross delivered on a velvet tray to the far post, and again with a trap and pass inside in one sumptuous movement - but in reality there was little to shout about, negatively or positively, as this was Rooney at his quietest.

There was a free kick after 40 minutes that was denied passage to the back of the net by Marcus Bent's head and then, 10 minutes later, a one-on-one with Nigel Martyn that had Merseyside screaming with elation when the veteran keeper turned it away. But that was about it.

Ridiculing their once-favourite son concerning everything from his parentage to certain hobbies he might indulge in was more fun than recognising the gulf in class between the fourth-placed Premiership side and those two places above.

Just another proud day for football then, and what happens when a high-profile ex returns to his former stamping ground. Figo at the Nou Camp, Ince at Upton Park, Campbell at White Hart Lane, Rooney at Goodison ... Once a hullabaloo, always a hullabaloo.

- INDEPENDENT