WAYNE Rooney deserves all the accolades coming his way after becoming England’s record ever goalscorer.
For him to have scored 50 times for his country before the age of 30 is remarkable.
And it’s brilliant that I’ve been able to experience an achievement like this in my lifetime.
I actually managed Hull City in games against Manchester United when Wayne was playing and of course he was always a real thorn in our side.
But I vividly remember watching him train as a 16-year-old.
At the time I was on a coaching course and it was being run by Steve McClaren.
We went to watch Everton’s youth team train to see what kind of training they were doing and you couldn’t help but be drawn to watching Wayne.
He was playing alongside Francis Jeffers and he was just fantastic.
The only time I had ever seen anything quite like it was when I saw Paul Gascoigne play at the start of his career.
It’s come as no surprise to me that Wayne has gone on to do so well and he’s clearly someone who loves the game.
He plays it in the right way too and he’s always in the face of the opposition which I like to see.
He’s done incredibly well to stay at the top of his game for so long and to go above a legend like Bobby Charlton shows just how good the record is.
Wayne still has a few years left as well and by the time he’s finished the number of goals he will have scored for his country is not going to be beaten for a very, very long time.
POSH WIN WAS FOR OUR SUPER SUPPORT
WE got our season off and running with a well deserved 2-1 win against Peterborough and I would like to take this opportunity to dedicate the win to the fans.
They’ve stood by us during the start to the season when we haven’t been winning and their support was brilliant again at the weekend.
I’ve found the fans here to be an intelligent bunch and they can see what we’re trying to achieve at the club.
They’ve got right behind us and the support at Coventry, in particular, was first class.
Long may that continue as far as I’m concerned, along with more good results.
PLEASING WEEK
FOLLOWING on from the Peterborough win it’s been a really good week for us.
We’ve had three players away on international duty which is fantastic and it meant we could actually have called the Peterborough game off if we wanted to.
That was never going to happen, but to have Ted Smith starting for England’s under-20 team is a huge achievement for the whole football club.
We were also delighted for Myles Weston who scored for Antigua and for Glen Rea who played for Republic of Ireland’s under-21 team in their 2-0 win in Andorra.
Glen flew out straight after the Peterborough game and I was also delighted by how the players performed in a midweek friendly, also against Peterborough.
We won the game 4-1 and the attitude of the group was spot on.
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