KEY POINTS:
When the dust has settled on the 2006-2007 Premiership football season and Chelsea have or have not won again, the season's most feel-good story will not be the glory boys of Chelsea or Manchester United but a 23-year-old gypsy, Freddy Eastwood.
He is the promising young striker from
unfashionable Southend United who tipped a team of millionaires from Manchester United out of the Carling Cup recently with a scorching free kick. His gypsy or Romany heritage is not quite unique - former Arsenal star Jose Antonio Reyes was also born a gypsy and Raby Howell, of Sheffield United and Liverpool (in the late 1960s), is reputedly the only full-blooded gypsy to play for England.
But what definitely is new is one of the "travellers" (as they are politically correctly known now in the UK) putting a halt to United's travels.
But it isn't pure, on-the-pitch football action that makes the story of Freddy Eastwood so warming - it's what happened off the pitch.
As with many gypsies, Eastwood and his wife Debbie, daughter Chardonnay and son Freddy Jr live in a mobile home on a piece of land Eastwood bought for NZ$6000 in 2004. Wayne Rooney, the Manchester United striker, lives in a NZ$12 million mansion, by comparison. But no one was threatening to bulldoze Rooney's home.
The Basildon District Council, however, had told Eastwood the bulldozers would be taking a path through his home of the past 20 years as he had tethered it on green belt land without planning permission.
It should be pointed out that: It could be said there is a bit of prejudice against gypsies. The "travellers" (a laughable euphemism if ever there was one; Eastwood has stayed in more or less the same spot for the past 20 years) are still viewed with suspicion by some and linked to crime and other middle-class horrors.
According to the Times of London, it is easy to understand Eastwood's omission re planning applications. A report in 1997 found that 90 per cent of planning applications from travellers were declined, compared to an 80 per cent success rate for everyone else. No wonder they travel, then.
Phil O'Reilly, the secretary at Eastwood's first club after he was released by West Ham as a young player, Grays Athletic, told the Guardian: "He [Eastwood] certainly had an eye for goal and very, very quick feet, but at the same time it could be said he was a fool to himself for not taking his football seriously.
"But the travellers are a very close-knit family. It was a standing joke here after he left that he could be seen on a Saturday morning exercising his horse with a cart on the A127 and then go on to play for Southend in the afternoon; several people saw him doing that," O'Reilly recalled.
"We had to be flexible with him because of his lifestyle but his father came with him to every game."
Eastwood is far from the vagrant that some assume gypsies to be. Not only is he keenly attached to Essex as his home - he had two trials with, ironically, Manchester United, but decided against taking matters further because it was too far away from home - but he also earns about NZ$300,000 a year. Not bad but nothing like the NZ$33 million that Rooney earns.
The "caravan" that the family lives in is definitely mobile but has been moored on his little slice of land for the past two years. It contains a computer, a flat-screen TV and a posh car is parked next to it. Hardly the stuff of a menace to society.
But once it came out that Manchester United's destroyer was at risk from the bulldozers, the council did an abrupt re-think and then announced that Eastwood's home was safe for the next five years.
So, with his home protected, Eastwood can now look after his career.
It nearly ended when he was released by West Ham as a teenager (Eastwood himself says that he clashed with former Hammers boss and now Newcastle manager Glenn Roeder) and that he had to be talked out of going to work at his father's car dealership in Essex.
He went to Grays and then to Southend where he has scored 49 goals in two seasons, with Southend being promoted each year.
He has 10 goals so far this season, including against Championship and Premiership opposition.
"This is the best result I've had in my career so far because I've always been a Man United fan," he said after the Carling Cup victory.
"To play against them was superb but to score the only goal was just the most amazing feeling. What we have done is exceptional. As soon as I hit the free kick I was happy with it."
It remains to be seen whether he will remain at the wonderfully named Roots Hall ground at Southend.
His value rose after the United match but Southend boss Steve Tilson is hoping that the lure of home will be too strong for other clubs to woo him away - and has slapped a NZ$15 million transfer fee on him as well.
Wayne's world
Earns: NZ$33m a year.
Signed: from Everton for NZ$30m.
Home: NZ$12.75m mansion in Cheshire; with own gym and cinema.
Car: NZ$150,000 cadillac Escalade; BMW X5, Chrysler 300C.
Freddy's fortunes
Earns: NZ$300,000 a year.
Signed: from Grays Athletic for NZ$120,000.
Home: caravan on $6000 section.
Car: NZ$40,000 MG ZR, from a sponsor as a reward for his goals.
