The trouble with Wayne

The gloves came off this week from Chelsea and Jose Mourinho in their pursuit of Wayne Rooney with their first formal offer, along with the Portuguese’s mind games – cleverly worded and laser guided – warning him about the dangers of playing second fiddle to Robin Van Persie in World Cup year. This coming after David Moyes’ surprising public admission, however truthful, that the flying Dutchman has now usurped Rooney as Old Trafford’s star striker.

Yet after securing his much-coveted signature in 2004, it was surely written that Rooney would conduct the Red Devil trophy winning orchestra for 15 years. So with his immediate future hanging in the balance and seemingly lying away from Old Trafford, how has Rooney’s star waned so much, will it ever shine as brightly again and would Moyes be best served to cash in now?

The most naturally gifted English footballer since Paul Gascoigne, his goal laden and match winning exploits at Euro 2004 hinted at a player who would break all manner of records, dominate major tournaments for years to come and could eventually be ranked as the best footballer this country has ever produced. And though he has to an extent – and still might – Rooney has never fully delivered on that promise in the same way Messi and Ronaldo clearly have with consistent excellence (in Ronaldo’s case, in two different leagues) apart from the 2009/2010 season.

He has yet to scale those heights again and harsh as it sounds for a player approaching 150 league goals for Man Utd, with a Champions League trophy and five League titles to his name, Rooney has only twice scored 20 League goals or more in nine seasons and was so evidently under par on numerous occasions last season, that his omission from the starting XI for Man Utd’s key champions league clash with Real Madrid was hardly a surprise.

With unquestionable ability, it could be that intense media scrutiny since the age of 16, nine years of Old Trafford hero worship, along with the pressure of being the national side’s ‘Messiah’, have taken their toll leaving him unmotivated and burnt out. With club captain Nemanja Vedic making a point of praising Rooney’s pre-season fitness levels as his best for ‘five years’, the cruel injuries that have affected all but one of his England appearances at a summer tournament may also be taking their toll. Fernando Torres is a first-hand cautionary tale about the debilitating affect of persistent injuries but Rooney still has at least four or five seasons to reverse the malaise and give us the consistent excellence we all thought he was destined to deliver.

Mourinho certainly thinks so and one would think Moyes does too having been Rooney’s first club manager, as Van Persie was bought to play with Rooney, not replace him. If not, would the Scot risk one of his first acts being to sell Rooney to a rival club? Which makes Moyes’ inflammatory comments – misplaced words surely designed to motivate his no.10 – suggesting he is just a squad player all the more surprising. If Rooney can regain form and focus he would be some squad player. And Stamford Bridge might be the clean slate he needs to do that. Let’s see how the saga ends…

Sports cheats must not prosper

Let’s cut straight to it. The world of athletics is still shuddering on its axis from shock waves created by two of the sport’s biggest global stars – Asafa Powell and Tyson Gay – failing drugs tests. If this wasn’t painful and disheartening enough for fans, this comes as a raft of leading Jamaican sprinters / track and field athletes have produced positive tests for banned substances in recent weeks, including the country’s most successful ever female athlete, Veronica Campbell. If you consider that Usain Bolt’s heir apparent and current world 100m champion Yohan Blake has ALREADY served a drugs ban, these results pour serious doubt and suspicion on what’s been behind the country’s recent domination of global sprinting, seeming conveyor-belt of world class sprinters and perhaps the greatest sprinter of them all…

Running parallel to this saga is the controversy surrounding British cyclist Chris Froome, who has been receiving daily interrogations – and accusations – from a French-led press pack unconvinced the dominant performances which currently see him lead the Tour de France, aren’t due to performance enhancing drugs. A legacy of Lance Armstrong cheating his way to seven consecutive titles during the sport’s infamous ‘EPO generation’ of drug cheats which saw seven previous winners of the world’s greatest bike race failing drugs tests at one time or another in their career. Froome’s Team Sky are making all the right noises about him being clean and I cross my fingers as a British sporting and cycling fan that’s the case.

But what cannot be denied is that for all the advancements in drugs testing, cheats still exist and for the good of sport as a whole, users of performance enhancing drugs, in any sport, cannot be allowed to succeed or return. More severe penalties for athletes than the current bans which never total more than two years would act as more of a deterrent for athletes who wilfully transgress – such as Yohan Blake or Spanish cyclist Alberto Contador – safe in the knowledge they can compete again. Currently, the risk of getting caught chasing riches is currently worth it. Eight year and complete life bans would certainly change that.

Performance enhancing drugs cheat: a) clean athletes denied the glory, adulation and rewards of winning b) fans and the sporting public who think they’re watching the peak of human athletic performance and c) devalue the subsequent results of competitors, wrongfully tainted as cheats because of the misdemeanours of their predecessors. To those who believe there should be an amnesty on drugs, creating a ‘level playing field’ where athletes are free to take any drug or supplement, I say that this: it will transform sport into a farce where only those with the biggest drugs cabinets can win. The fact that four of the world’s fastest men over 100m have now failed drugs test is testament to that.

After the relative drug free London Olympics last summer, these latest revelations only serve to erode confidence, increase cynicism and devalue the achievements of clean athletes. It’s laughable and symbolic that next month’s athletics World Championships in Moscow, take place at a time when FORTY Russian athletes are currently serving suspensions after failing drugs tests. Whether this is evidence of improved policing or just scratching the surface of more wide-spread use, who knows.

But aside from the moral implications, sport must win the war of drugs. Unless viewers will just turn off.