Did he?* Had a quick google and it seems he did smoke (and is in surprisingly good company - Cruyff, Socrates, Zidane, Ginola) but can't find anything to indicate (or disprove) that he was that regular a smoker.
* - that's a genuine question btw; not a sarky dismissal. Hard to differentiate in online text though!
Last edited by pineapple stu; 26/04/2022 at 9:04 PM.
I’d say that Rooney would not be the first football manager to be a hypocrite ! !
that was certainly my understanding, details are a bit hazy now. i think it first emerged when he was on his honeymoon. shortly after, the dj for the wedding or honeymoon or something like that did an interview where he said that wayne was chain smoking throughout.
after that, there were occasional players leaking stuff about his regular smoking (especially when he was struggling) and he was photographed smoking really frequently. so, wouldn't swear by it, but i always just assumed it was true
I hadn't heard that one; it's possible, but I'd have thought he'd get all sorts of pressures and help to quit the way clubs work on players now. I think Rooney was ferociously competitive, but indisciplined. He pushed hard - maybe harder than anyone - but he wasn't smart about looking after himself. I think that's visible in how young he seemed to burn out. Anyway, I agree with Pineapple that it's not that much of a gotcha, other than that it may undermine his authority as manager.
Always found it strange that pro footballers and doctors are two of the last groups of people you'd expect to be heavy smokers, but from my experience heavy smokers are reasonably common among both those professions.
And add the two together and you get Socrates, probably the worst of the lot.
Mention of Socrates and there was that famous story (maybe someone on here could verify it) about his studying at UCD and his turning up to play for the reserves one Saturday. He was told by the powers that be in the students' team that he would not get a game, and promptly left. Of course that was before he went on to star at the 1982 World Cup.
I think the Socrates UCD link has been proven to be a myth.
Yeah, we covered it in the UCD programme in the mid 00s. Someone got in touch (a former foot.ie poster actually - sadly passed away in the last couple of years) and Socrates said he'd never even been to Ireland. No idea where it originated.
Festy nearly cost me my Wordle record today.
Yep, ended up with four of the letters and had to remind myself that Festy isn't a word! Unfortunately for me, testy wasn't right either so a disappointing 5 today...
I tried it and it accepted it in line 5! Testy was my line 4. It left me with just one more guess.
Starts today so must have got his head down and impressed again in training. Good for him and good to see Rooney not holding a grudge and been professional about it
Do you have a link to the stream?
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