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Wayne Rooney waited a month to be Everton mascot after the last postponed Merseyside Derby and ended up chipping Neville Southall twice in the warm-up when he was aged just 11
Storm Darragh has caused the Merseyside Derby to be postponed for only the third time in the fixture’s 130-year history and the last time that happened, there ended up being a clash between Everton’s most decorated player and their greatest homegrown talent… who was just 11 years old at the time!..CLICK TO READ THE FULL NEWS HERE▶▶
With 65mph winds battering Liverpool on Saturday, what was scheduled to be the final Premier League meeting between the Blues and Reds at Goodison Park was called off four hours before kick-off.
The only previous occasions that the showpiece game has previously been postponed came in 1965 when there was heavy snow on the Goodison Park pitch on January 23, with Everton winning the rearranged match 2-1 on April 12, and October 20, 1996, when the plug was pulled on an Anfield clash less than an hour before kick-off because of a waterlogged pitch. The latter was moved back a month, which just gave a young Wayne Rooney an extra four weeks to work on his party piece that would infuriate Neville Southall.
When the game was played on Wednesday November 20, Rooney, who had been with Everton since he was nine and netted 114 goals in 29 games for their Under-10s and Under-11s the previous season, was chosen to be the Blues’ mascot.
But while the precocious talent from Croxteth was desperate for Joe Royle’s ‘Dogs of War’ to get one over Roy Evans’ so-called ‘Spice Boys’ – this match, which finished in a 1-1 draw with Robbie Fowler’s opener on the half-hour mark being cancelled out by Gary Speed’s equaliser eight minutes from the end was in the middle of a nine-game unbeaten run for Everton in the Merseyside Derby – he still thought nothing of embarrassing one of his heroes ahead of kick-off.
Speaking to his former Manchester United team-mate Gary Neville on the Stick to Football podcast brought to you by Sky Bet, Rooney who had been practising chipping chip shots from outside the area, recalled the incident. He said: “Yep [it happened]. I was waiting for the game, it felt like forever.
It was at Anfield, and I think it was the only game in recent years that got called off because of the rain, so I was waiting for ages.
“When it got rescheduled, I went as a mascot and there was Dave Watson and John Barnes, and when you go out it was when the goalkeepers used to take the mascots out and have a little kick about.
“Twice it happened, Southall’s rolled it out and I dinked him, and I could see him looking at me to say, what you doing? So, he’s rolled it out and I’ve had another couple shots into his hand, then I dinked him again. He’s called me a ‘little b*****d.’ I was 11 years old.”
Although Southall won two League Championships, two FA Cups and the European Cup-Winners’ Cup with Everton while also holding the club’s all-time appearance record with 751 games (some 217 more than his closest rival Brian Labone) and was widely-regarded as being the best goalkeeper in the world at the peak of his powers, the Wales international used to hate players chipping him as he didn’t believe they would ever dare try it in a competitive fixture.
Speaking to i in 2020, Southall said: “I still remember Mark Ward’s first day at the club when Kevin Sheedy and Kevin Ratcliffe wound him up, telling him I loved being chipped. I hated it.
“It used to drive me mad so when he did it, I chased him and hit him so hard I broke one of his ribs. I didn’t like the fact the same players wouldn’t have the b******s to do it in a proper game.”…CLICK TO READ THE FULL NEWS HERE▶▶
