Wayne Rooney admitted to “losing his head” after his Manchester United team-mates played a practical joke on him.
Sir Alex Ferguson‘s Red Devils were notoriously well drilled and had plenty of chemistry on the pitch, hence why so many of various teams were able to dominate the Premier League at one point or another.
Off it, however, was a different story. When their legendary gaffer wasn’t watching, the rules largely went out the window – as exemplified by the stunt which Rooney recalled left him fuming when being quizzed by Gary Neville on The Overlap.
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Neville explained why he enjoyed the culture of the dressing room in the mid to late 2000s, telling his former colleague: “It’s brilliant, because we got older. I remember me and [Paul] Scholesy used to sit over in the corner just laughing our heads off, because you were keeping us young.”
While he was able to enjoy it from afar, Rooney was the butt of the joke while they were travelling to an away match. “Remember on a train, I think Fletch (Darren Fletcher) got FHM or Zoo or something like that and it had a blow up bin for your beers,” he explained.
“We were on the train on the way to a game. I was sat with you and [Ryan] Giggsy and they were sat on the four seats behind – Fletch, Rio [Ferdinand], Sheasy (John O’Shea). They blew it up, put it over my head and started punching me. I’ve lost me head. The coffee cup nearly went at them.”
(Image: YouTube/The Overlap)
Rooney almost certainly gave as good as he got, though, if his own tale from training at Everton is anything to go by. He pulled arguably a worse trick on then-manager David Moyes, who didn’t even know it was him behind it.
“Moyesy’s ran in off the training pitch. He obviously must have desperately needed the toilet, ran in, straight into the first team dressing room,” Rooney detailed on the Stick to Football podcast. “Straight on the toilet, closed the door.
“I knew what was happening, I could see them all looking at me, filling the bucket up. They were like, ‘There you go’. I’m like, ‘For f*** sake’. I’ve gone in the next cubicle, stood on the toilet and then gone whoosh. I sprinted out of there, just got out of there!”