Mark Ogden: Manchester United's Wayne Rooney should not be punished by FA for swearing outburst against West Ham

Mark Ogden: Manchester United's Wayne Rooney should not be punished by FA for swearing outburst against West Ham

So Wayne Rooney delivered a foul-mouthed address to the nation before adding that there really is no such thing as Santa Claus.

Photo: EPA

By Mark Ogden 5:46PM BST 03 Apr 2011

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Ok, I made that last bit up. The Manchester United forward did not expose the deception of parents across the country and it’s lucky for him that he managed to bite his tongue long enough to avoid earning the genuine scorn of those of us with children of an impressionable age.

Had Wayne Rooney crossed that line, he would be getting a real sense today of the outrage of a nation.

As it stands, after barking a four-letter rant into a television camera at Upton Park, the 25-year-old is instead the central figure in a debate about role models and how social decline can be traced back to the utterances of overpaid footballers.

My five-year-old boy is obsessed with Wayne Rooney. He has the kit, with ‘Rooney 10’ on the back, and has now asked for the undershirt worn by Rooney and many of his Premier League contemporaries.

He is also bewitched by Cristiano Ronaldo and Fernando Torres, like most boys entranced by the cartoon-like superhero image of football’s modern-day icons, but he has yet to ask for an earring to look like Ronaldo and, so far at least, he does not wander around in a Torres-style sulk, but there is time for that.

And equally, despite his Rooney fixation, my son has not developed a habit of elbowing other children in the back of the head.

Does he swear? I hope not, but once your little boy begins school and shares a playground with 10 and 11-year-olds, it is inevitable that he will hear the kind of language usually only associated with footballers, workmen across the world and parents who trap their fingers in doors or whack their thumbs with a hammer.

But he did not respond to Rooney’s rant this weekend by telling friends or family where to go to in an overly-aggressive, expletive-laden manner.

His only observation during or after United’s 4-2 victory was to ask, ‘why is Rooney pinching the ball,’ as he walked off at the end of the game having scored a hat-trick.

Kids are often smarter than adults credit them to be. They know bad behaviour and naughty words without having to be told about them.

Parents will always attempt to protect children when the likes of Rooney tarnish their role-model status, but the chances are that they have already heard far worse in the playground, from older siblings or on the internet.

When Eric Cantona jumped into the Selhurst Park crowd in 1995, he was rightly punished and banned as a result of the incident, but while the Frenchman was the iconic figure of the Premier League at that stage, how many five-year-olds have grown into 21-year-old crowd-jumpers?

As a five-year-old, Rooney would have watched Gary Lineker score goals for England without so much as a stray elbow or swear word in sight, yet he has not become Saint Wayne of Croxteth as a result.

But maybe football has become too earthy and uncouth for children to embrace.

So if you can handle the spitting of Tiger Woods, the swearing of Andy Murray or the eye-gouging of some of the more uncontrollable characters in rugby, then there are alternatives.

Or maybe not.

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