Asking me who my favourite player of all time is, is a tricky one, like nailing jelly to the wall of a spiraling jumbo jet.

One of my favourite players has to be Wayne Rooney, not the big-shot superstar of Manchester United, but the ravenous youngster at Everton. Although Fergie has improved some areas of Wayne’s game he was a natural genius at Everton, someone who didn’t need coaching – and some of his performances at Everton, taking multiple players on, are not as often reproduced by the United version of Rooney.

I remember staying at my grandparents’ house in Aughton, Lancashire, on the eve of our match against a bullet-proof Arsenal. My dad and I stayed in the bedroom he used to share with his brother as a child. As we lay there, literally gnawing at my gran's bedspread with excitement, we restlessly speculated about the giddy heights that Everton would scale the following day. Many scenarios were mooted that night, but the one we both liked the most (for its unbridled optimism) was that the latest young recruit from the Goodison sausage camp, Wayne Rooney, would come on and score a glorious winner in the dying minutes of the game. Maybe, just maybe, Wayne would go on to be as good as Michael Ball, Danny Cadamarteri or even Franny Jeffers. "What if, dad? What if he's a 'god', like Franny was?" The fact that Franny Jeffers was the pinnacle of brilliance in my mind shows you just how starved I had been of true brilliance.

The day that scorched his name on my mind came at Goodison when we came up against the unbeaten and seemingly unstoppable genius of Arsenal. With mere minutes remaining, an anonymous youngster shuffled on. This boy took just two touches of the ball to send his name into every household in the land. He trapped the ball dead, and then arced it under the crossbar like a sleek sunset, above and beyond a flailing Seaman. He was a legend now, not a boy – and his name was Wayne Rooney.

We all remember what happened that day. Little snapshots flutter back into my memory. Wayne's goal, a Krakatoan eruption in Goodison, my dad letting off a minute-long ecstatic scream at the final whistle and listening to the feverish hoarse voices at the train station talking about 'our Wayne'.

Wayne Rooney, at Everton, was raw, angry, and exhilarating – his temper could turn just as swiftly as he could when facing an opposition defender, and to us Evertonians starved of skill and for years dreaming of being able to splash millions on a Ronaldo, this man-boy was a glorious surprise, our Roonaldo.