Latest news with #Rooney
Yahoo
2 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
🎥 OTD: Wayne Rooney nets a classic strike against Brazil at Maracanã
Wayne Rooney stands above most when it comes to his footballing legacy for England. For many, the Liverpool-born forward is the best the nation has ever produced. Across a glistening career at the club and international level, Rooney can call upon a goal catalogue that would make many fellow professionals blush, but fewer still can boast that they've scored against Brazil at Maracanã. Advertisement On this day 12 years ago, Rooney did just that during a 2-1 friendly win over Seleção in the summer before the 2014 World Cup. The stars came out that night as well, with both sides boasting names the likes of Steven Gerrard, Jack Wilshere, Ashley Cole, Neymar, Ronaldinho, and Dani Alves. And it was Rooney who opened the scoring on the night in the 27th minute with a trademark heavy hit from outside the box that beat Júlio César after it ripped into the top corner. Fred would come off the bench for Brazil to level matters just three minutes after the break before Frank Lampard turned goalscorer after being introduced just before the restart, with his 60th-minute goal standing as the winner. Advertisement Unfortunately for England, their summer campaign 12 months on would end in disaster when they finished bottom of Group D after registering just a single point against Costa Rica in the wake of losses against Italy and Uruguay. 📸 Friedemann Vogel - 2013 Getty Images
New York Post
a day ago
- Entertainment
- New York Post
New Mike Tyson book goes inside cartoonish early attempts to market Iron Mike
Edited and adapted from the book 'Baddest Man: The Making of Mike Tyson' by Mark Kriegel. Copyright © 2025 by Mark Kriegel. From Penguin Press, an imprint of Penguin Random House LLC. Reprinted by permission. Going back several fights, Mike Tyson had developed alopecia, a condition that manifested itself with a bald spot on the right side of his scalp about an inch above the hairline. He attributed it to stress — not just the pressure of being heavyweight champion but also the unforgiving pace of his training schedule and the gladiator-like sparring. What's more, Tyson's courtship with Robin Givens was a turbulent one: passionate, tempestuous, full of fits and starts. He'd push; she'd pull. There was also an incident that summer at the Greek Theatre in Los Angeles: Tyson tried to kiss a parking lot attendant, then smacked around the guy who came to her defense. Jimmy Jacobs and Bill Cayton took care of it, of course — for a total of $105,000 and an admonition, for anyone who cared to listen, that 'the little guy' was now a target for gold-digging litigants everywhere. What followed was a difficult camp, training for his final unification bout with IBF champ Tony Tucker. Robin showed up. They fought. Tyson informed Steve Lott he was retiring, then flew to Albany to hang out with Rory Holloway. That he was AWOL for the better part of a week led to a spate of columns by Don King's go-to reporter (and eventual publicist), Mike Marley of the New York Post. 8 Mike Tyson (right) punches Tony Tucker during their Heavyweight title bout at the Las Vegas Hilton in Paradise, Nevada on Aug. 1, 1987. AP There were questions as to whether trainer Kevin Rooney could handle the now-twenty-one-year-old champ. Jacobs and Cayton even had a sit-down with the venerable trainer Eddie Futch in Las Vegas. They denied it, of course. But Marley only came back harder, writing on 'the summer of Tyson's discontent' and opining that Rooney and Lott had him under a kind of house arrest in Vegas. 'They even grab his mail,' said Marley's source, whom I'd bet was King. It was a grievance that Robin had already seized on. 'These people' — Jacobs, Cayton, and their underlings — 'don't understand Mike,' she told biographer Jose Torres. 'They will never know how to deal with him.' By August 1, 1987, as Tyson entered the ring for the Tucker fight, the once-nickel-sized bald spot was more like a silver dollar. Not that anyone mentioned it. HBO was determined to present the Tyson camp only in the most flattering light. First came a prefight feature on the now-embattled Rooney, or as HBO's Larry Merchant called him, '[legendary trainer Cus] D'Amato's keenest disciple.' Rooney was shown at home with his two small children, working with inmates at the Greene Correctional Facility in Coxsackie, N.Y., and, of course, ever ready with a 'dese, dem, and dose' tribute to D'Amato. His gambling and drinking weren't part of the script, and neither was his former friend Teddy Atlas. Then, quite abruptly — like hearing ad copy before you know what's being sold — a Father George Clements came on camera attesting to Tyson's good works. Clements, a friend of Jacobs going back to his days in Chicago, was a Catholic priest whose South Side parish church had burned down the year before. But just two weeks before the Tucker fight, Tyson and King miraculously appeared at a ground-breaking ceremony for his new house of worship and presented him with a $20,000 check. 'I have no doubt in my mind,' Clements told HBO viewers, 'that with the help of the heavyweight champion of this planet, that church will go up.' *** Fourteen minutes later, after the baroque trumpets (thank you, Don) heralding Tyson's arrival but still just seconds into the opening round, the young champ took a left uppercut that lifted him clean off his feet. Tucker was a 10–1 underdog, an ancillary presence going into the fight. If he seemed nondescript, then it was a judgment rendered largely by the same people (not merely fans, those in the press box as well) who failed to individuate just about every Black champion and challenger going back to Larry Holmes, as if they were all versions of the same bum. In fact, what was most typical about Tucker was the way in which he'd been divvied up, with chunks of his purse going to promoters Cedric Kushner, Jeff Levine, and Josephine Abercrombie and managers Dennis Rappaport, Alan Kornberg, and Emanuel Steward, not to mention his own father, who had auctioned off these aforementioned shares of his progeny. 8 The cover of Mark Kriegel's book, 'Baddest Man: The Making of Mike Tyson.' Penguin Press Percentages aside, though, Tucker was a real talent, well schooled, with a fine pedigree. He'd won an assortment of national and international titles while Tyson was still at Spofford. Now, at twenty-nine, he was at his physical peak. Six five, 221 pounds, with a thirteen-inch reach advantage over Tyson, Tucker was the kind of athlete who in later years would have forsaken dim, fetid gyms for an athletic dorm in the SEC or the Big Ten. Undefeated in thirty-four fights, Tucker had never even been knocked down. So perhaps it shouldn't have been such a shocker that he lifted Tyson airborne. Still more shocking was the manner in which Tyson took it — without so much as flinching. The chin that absorbed the blow remains Tyson's most undermentioned virtue. The uppercut wasn't the last clean shot he took, either. It was easy to see why Michael Spinks — now sitting with Butch Lewis in the uppermost row, UU, of the Hilton Center, pretending to be inconspicuous — had avoided him for the easier money against Gerry Cooney. Tucker had an assured left hook he could throw moving backward and an excellent straight right hand whose proficiency waned through the bout, as he'd hurt it the week before in sparring. But Tucker knew how to tie up an opponent without looking like a cowardly lion. It was a good fight, belying the notion that Tyson's opponents were either heartless huggers or petrified victims. Eventually, though, Tyson's power, relentlessness, and dauntless chin proved too much for Tucker, who suffered his first loss by unanimous decision. *** Tyson now had all three belts, the undisputed heavyweight champion. Barely twenty-one, he was not merely king of the division but, as Cus and Jimmy had envisioned, king of all boxing. Such an occasion called for a coronation, or as King put it, 'a throneization.' Hence the baroque trumpets — a band of six, played by grown men in feathered caps, velvet pantaloons, and sequined tunics — now heard again to summon Tyson's subjects, loyal and otherwise. In addition to the trumpeters was a delegation of Beefeaters, one of whom was the otherwise no-shtick ring announcer Chuck Hull — an offense that, wrote the Daily News's Mike Katz, 'no amount of gin could blot.' Hull, a pit boss by day, had vowed never to 'prostitute his craft' like the new, attention-seeking generation of 'Let's get ready to rumble' announcers. Nevertheless, there he was reading from a script that began, 'Hear ye! Hear ye!' Tyson, to his obvious chagrin, was seated in a red velvet throne and presented with what King called an assortment of 'baubles, rubies, and fabulous doodads.' They included a chinchilla robe from Lenobel Furriers of Las Vegas and a studded necklace and scepter, courtesy of Felix the Jeweler. A crown from the same set was placed atop his head by Muhammad Ali. 8 Mike Tyson celebrates his victory over Tony Tucker at the coronation gala following his world boxing heavyweight championship fight in Las Vegas on Aug. 2, 1987. AP More astounding, and an even greater testament to King's powers of persuasion, were the 'knights' the new champion had vanquished, among them 'Sir Bonecrusher' and 'Sir Pinky,' otherwise known as Pinklon Thomas. The heads of the notoriously feudal, tribute-demanding sanctioning bodies were all there, as were a bevy of HBO executives who received statuettes, leading Eddie Murphy to wonder why in a room full of Black fighters, only the white guys got trophies. There was a children's choir from Chicago and a female gospel singer from Cleveland. The Reverend Al Green sang 'Our Precious Lord.' The Reverend Charles Williams, leader of the annual Indiana Black Expo, blessed the meal. Then the Reverend Al Sharpton — newly famous from his protest marches in Howard Beach — presented Tyson with his championship belts, while Givens, his ostensible queen, was seen beaming as the photographers snapped away. The single victory for modesty that night was notched by 'Sir Seth' Abraham of HBO, who declined the robe King had selected for him. 'Is it real sable?' he asked. 'Of course not,' said King. But consider the force of ego, the power required of King to create such an assemblage. What must it have taken to hold the assorted dignitaries hostage almost two hours after a title fight? Bad taste? Vegas was founded on bad taste. This wasn't about the entertainment or the blessings. It was about the real king. If Tyson were a Tudor and Seth Abraham the Bank of England, then Don King was a version of Cardinal Wolsey. He wasn't the jester; he was the power. And if this was Don King's tribute to Olde Las Vegas, it was also his message to her founding fathers, many of whom, just like Don, came by way of Cleveland, members of a Hebraic criminal aristocracy. 8 Mike Tyson (r.) and Robin Givens (l.) in January 1988. Getty Images It was now supposed, given the rapidity and relative ease with which Tyson seized custody of all three belts, that his reign would last beyond even the foreseeable future. His next opponent, Olympic gold medalist Tyrell Biggs, was already on the books for that fall. But while Biggs's mobility and jab were often cited as the tools necessary to beat Tyson, no one really expected that much of the erstwhile Olympian, who had already endured at least one cocaine rehab. Beyond that? George Foreman, retired for a decade, had just embarked on what seemed a circus-like comeback. Cruiserweight champion Evander Holyfield was talking about eventually moving up, though his chances as an undersized heavyweight seemed fanciful and owed mostly to the success of Michael Spinks. Spinks was seen as the only truly interesting fight for Tyson. The real question, then, was for Tyson himself. What would his long reign signify? How would he compare with his predecessors? The question had less to do with his actual self than with his persona. Jack Dempsey, who had ridden the rails as a boy, came to personify the Roaring Twenties. Joe Louis was pressed into service as a shining example of American democracy on the eve of World War II. Just the same, there was a reason that the photograph of Rocky Marciano ruining Joe Walcott's jaw had assumed a place of such reverence, along with the Christ heads and centerfolds, in Italian social clubs and barbershops across America. Finally, there was Ali, whose mythic self had evolved into several incarnations, each one bigger than the last. Garry Wills once called Ali 'catnip to the intellectuals.' And it felt like Joyce Carol Oates began in a similar vein with Tyson in Life. Her note on Tyson as 'a psychic outlaw' feels like warmed-over Mailer, while her notion of Tyson as perhaps 'the first heavyweight boxer in America to transcend issues of race' seems hopeful but naive. Still, she made explicit what had been hiding in plain sight: 'He is trained, managed and surrounded, to an unusual degree, by white men.' That these white men had given Tyson, quite intentionally, a kind of Good Housekeeping seal of approval led to another of Oates's keener observations, in a subsequent piece that year for the Village Voice: 'For all his reserve, his odd, even eerie combination of shyness and aggression, his is a wonderfully marketable image.' Consider that Ali in 1979 — not yet retired but a beloved global icon, managed to get an endorsement for d-CON roach spray. But Tyson at a mere twenty-one — in addition to being HBO's 'walking billboard' — already had deals with Diet Pepsi, Eastman Kodak, and the Japanese brewer Suntory, as well a groundbreaking agreement (negotiated, like the others, by Cayton) with Nintendo for Mike Tyson's Punch Out!!, a video game that would sell more than two million copies in its first year. Cayton even thought to trademark Tyson's very Rocky-like nickname, Iron Mike. Perhaps, then, Tyson's true meaning had to do with his value as a commercial touchstone. But playing the pitchman — at least as his handlers had scripted the role for him — required some image scrubbing. 'To overcome the stigma attached to Mike's juvenile delinquent past,' recalled Cayton, 'we arranged for Mike to make a commercial on behalf of the New York City Police Department and an anti-drug commercial for the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Mike also did a commercial for the Internal Revenue Service and for United Cerebral Palsy. Each commercial was designed to foster the image of Mike as civic-minded and law-abiding.' 8 Mike Tyson on the cover of Ring Magazine in November 1987. The Ring Magazine via Getty Imag And, in a very particular way, whiter. 'In the way he's been handled,' noted The Ring's Jack Obermayer, 'it's almost like he's a 'white hope' in a Black man's skin.' Of course, the selling of Tyson began with the fairy tale of 'Cus and the Kid.' He had lived, essentially, in an all-Black world until D'Amato and his minions 'saved' him, in part by segregating him. He then attended mostly white schools and learned his craft in a mostly white gym above a small-town police station. His trainers were white, as were his patrons and even his cornermen, cut man Matt Baranski, and bucket man Lott, who'd now remind Tyson, per Jacobs's instructions, to remove his blingier pieces of jewelry before being interviewed on camera. Tyson, like Floyd Patterson before him, had been taught obedience in matters of commerce but had begun to bridle at the way he was being monetized. All those 'Just Say No'-style PSAs made him feel like 'a fake f–king Uncle Tom n—a' and 'a monkey,' Tyson writes in his biography Undisputed Truth. *** Nobody transcends race, not in America. But Tyson's racial predicament — or his cultural one, depending how you parse it — was distinct, and connected or perhaps conflated with his old neighborhood. 'Jimmy and Bill were intent on stripping away all the Brownsville from me,' he writes in that same passage. 'But Brownsville was who I was … Everyone knew I was a criminal. I had come from a detention home. Now all of sudden I was a good guy?' Something in Tyson would always romanticize the Street and judge himself more harshly than his contemporaries who hadn't had the benefit of an old man to save and rehabilitate them. Whatever Tyson had accomplished, he still wondered how it would play back home. That he no longer had a Brooklyn address didn't mean he'd ever left. Or ever would. 'To be honest,' says Lennie Daniels, one of his early sparring partners and among the very few Black men he met in Catskill, 'I don't know if he ever was happy being away from it.' That summer, Lori Grinker finally prevailed on him to do a shoot back in Brownsville. They left from Lott's apartment in Midtown. Tyson wore all white but for the geometric print on his T-shirt and his gold watches — a thin Cartier on his left wrist, a Rolex on his right. Grinker's photographs of that day seem straightforward enough: Tyson at the barbershop; Tyson signing autographs for the admiring children gathered around his blue Rolls-Royce; Tyson in sunglasses, resplendent in his white ensemble, sitting on the hood of the car, set against a pocked and weedy lot, greeting old friends like supplicants. 8 Mike Tyson, sitting on his new Rolls Royce, visits friends in Brownsville in 1987. Lori Grinker/Contact Press Images More remarkable, in Grinker's recollection, was an encounter on the drive out. Halfway across the bridge — either Williamsburg or Manhattan, she doesn't recall — a woman pulled up alongside the Rolls and handed Tyson a slip of paper. It was her daughter's phone number. Nothing unusual in that — except for the question it provoked. 'People who see me in this car, what do they think?' Tyson asked Grinker. 'That I'm a drug dealer?' The streets of Tyson's childhood had only become meaner and more deadly in his absence. The introduction of crack cocaine in the mid-eighties changed the culture of crime. Crackheads re-upped more frequently than heroin junkies. On the supply side, all those stickup kids from Spofford were bosses now. Or they were dead. Crack democratized the gangster life. You didn't need a French Connection or a made man willing to sell you kilos on consignment. You didn't need some weathered Sicilian to 'open the books' or get you a union card. There weren't many freer markets than the one for crack. All you needed was some cocaine, baking soda, a 9-millimeter automatic pistol or an Uzi, and enough balls to hold your corner. This was a new kind of Murder, Inc., and everyone seemed to be in the line of fire — not merely bystanders, innocent and otherwise, but also witnesses, potential witnesses, protected witnesses, even cops. I remember stories of teenage gangsters who had prepaid for their funerals, that they might go out with the proper pomp and respect, like something out of a vintage mob movie. Perhaps the stories were only apocryphal. But they had the ring of truth, or rather, in places like Brownsville and East New York, the ring of cinematic reality. By now, Al Pacino's Scarface had become a kind of documentary, a how-to primer on being a gangster. In the Seventy-Fifth Precinct, mothers put their children to bed in bathtubs, fearing stray shots that came through the windows after dark. *** On just such a night in the summer of '87, the blue Rolls made an encore appearance in the neighborhood, rolling up Sutter Avenue from Brownsville to East New York, past the beleaguered Seventy-Fifth Precinct toward the Cypress Hills projects. It had to be around 10:00 p.m. 8 Mike Tyson tries on a new outfit while shopping in Atlantic City in 1987. Getty Images Brian Gibbs, known as 'Glaze,' remembers standing outside his mother's apartment at 1266 Sutter and being dressed for work: jeans, a baseball jersey (likely the Cardinals) over his Kevlar vest, and a 9-millimeter Taurus in his waistband. He had recently been released after thirteen months in Rikers and the Brooklyn House of Detention, the case against him — the murder of a woman Gibbs suspected of robbing one of his drug spots — having fallen apart after he bribed a witness $25,000 not to testify. Now he was clearing $40,000 a day as the boss of his own crew, 'M and M,' short for 'money and murder.' Beyond that, though, what made Glaze Gibbs one of most feared men in New York was his position as 'security chief' for two guys he'd met in prison, Fat Cat Nichols and Pappy Mason. Glaze was just starting to make his rounds when he saw the blue Rolls coming slowly, deliberately, almost trolling its way up Sutter. The windows were down, Uzis dangling from the passenger side. It wasn't a prudent or professional move. Rather, it was someone who wanted to be seen. Just as Gibbs asked himself, Who the f–k is this?, a murmur swept through Cypress. Yo, that's Mike Tyson's car! That's Mike Tyson! 'Tyson wanted people to know he was around,' says Gibbs. 'He wanted to make a statement.' Tyson wasn't a gangster, but he loved hanging out with those who were, some of them old friends. What's more, he was conspicuously generous to them. They wanted me to be a hero, but I wanted to be a villain. Mike Tyson There were two ways, Gibbs was told, that Tyson would help out a Brooklyn guy with the proper rep. First, in jail, he'd break off some cash and have it put in your commissary account. Second, in death. Tyson paid for a lot of funerals in those years, many of them at the Lawrence H. Woodward Funeral Home, 1 Troy Avenue, Bedford-Stuyvesant, which turned out to be as frequently surveilled by cops as Midnight Rose's had been half a century earlier. Tyson even went so far as to bankroll one old friend's crack operation: 'Five thousand here, twenty thousand there, just so that he didn't have to work for someone else. I wasn't a partner and I never wanted any return from my investment.' 'He wanted to be like us,' Gibbs says of Tyson. 'Mike wanted to be down.' And he was. The era had its own signposts, its own distorted frame of reference: the glorification of gangster pictures, Mafia tropes, and automatic weapons. More important, though, was its soundtrack. Tyson was in Spofford when he first heard 'Rapper's Delight.' Hip-hop quickly evolved from mere braggadocio to a reflection of life on the streets. He was sequestered in Catskill when Grandmaster Flash released 'The Message,' a percussive allegory about a stickup kid turned jailhouse punk and found hanged to death in his cell. 'Those was our people — all the criminals and thieves,' Tyson would recall of the genre's early years. 'We all listened to hip-hop: the moneymakers … the killers the robbers. All the f–king street urchins. We all listened.' 8 Mike Tyson poses for a portrait in 1988. The Ring Magazine via Getty Imag By 1987, the vernacular and imagery had changed again. Boogie Down Productions released Criminal Minded, a seminal hip-hop album that featured KRS-One and Scott La Rock (who'd die by gunfire just weeks after the Tyson-Tucker fight) with an arsenal on the cover. References to Uzis and 9-millimeters became common, including the inaugural hit from Public Enemy, eponymously titled 'Public Enemy No. 1': 'I'll show you my gun, my Uzi weighs a ton / Because I'm Public Enemy number one.' Gibbs remembers the cut fondly. It was a Friday on D block, eighth floor of the Brooklyn House. 'Yo, Glaze,' inmates started yelling, 'did you hear that?' Walter 'King Tut' Johnson — also from Cypress, famous for robbing at gunpoint three hundred members of his own mother's church — had called into WBLS during Mr. Magic's Rap Attack and dedicated the song to Gibbs. Coincidentally or not, the single also contained hip-hop's first lyrical reference — as best I can tell — to Tyson: 'I can go solo, like a Tyson bolo.' *** Never mind that neither Chuck D nor anyone else had ever seen Tyson throw a bolo punch. Tyson had now entered the zeitgeist in a way that hadn't been scripted by a white man. For a couple of years, Tyson had been promised as a successor to Dempsey, Louis, and Marciano. Surrounded by white ethnics in his camp, he was seen as safe. But Public Enemy — whose logo featured a man posing B-boy style in the crosshairs of a rifle scope — was not. 'Here's a rap group that doesn't aim to — or have a chance of — crossing over,' Daniel Brogan wrote in the Chicago Tribune. 'They're raw and confrontational, just the sort of thing that frightens programmers of every ilk.' Or would it? Hip-hop would change the market itself. Hip hop wanted a Sonny Liston. Whatever Tyson looked like to network executives or that guy with a VFW cap in the Latham Coliseum, he was something else entirely refracted through the prism of hip-hop. 'The moment was right for Tyson just like it was right for Dempsey,' says Merchant. 'Dempsey didn't become the Jack Dempsey of story and song until after World War I. Then a heavyweight champion suddenly materializes from our Wild West, with that rip-roaring style, fighting in places like Montana. There's a metaphor in there somewhere. But the same way all the dots connected for Dempsey, they connected for Tyson with Black inner-city culture. The street guys adopted him. They got Mike Tyson.' America was at the cusp of a bull market for bad guys. Merchant didn't comprehend this so fully at the time — nor did anyone at HBO. Ditto Jacobs and Cayton. 'They wanted me to be a hero,' recalls Tyson, 'but I wanted to be a villain.' There was only one man who had any real feel for what Tyson actually wanted, or how it would play. 'Don King,' says Merchant. 'King sensed Tyson could be bigger than big.' Mark Kriegel, a former sports columnist for the New York Post and the Daily News, is a boxing analyst and essayist for ESPN. He is the author of Namath: A Biography, Pistol: The Life of Pete Maravich and The Good Son: The Life of Ray 'Boom Boom' Mancini.
Chicago Tribune
2 days ago
- Sport
- Chicago Tribune
A sacrifice fly? Think again, Quinn Rooney. ‘It just kept going.' He makes sure Benet keeps going too.
Benet sophomore first baseman Quinn Rooney put his head down and ran hard after hitting the towering fly ball to right field. It wasn't until he got to second base that he realized what he had done. Kaneland junior right fielder Carter Grabowski drifted back and got ready to catch what everyone figured would be a sacrifice fly. Then he signaled that he couldn't find the ball. That's because it was gone for a tie-breaking three-run home run. 'I actually didn't think it was a home run,' Rooney said. 'I thought it was like a sac fly to the right fielder. But as I was rounding second, I saw the home plate umpire point like that, and I just got really excited.' So did Rooney's teammates, who mobbed him after he crossed home plate with what turned out to be the decisive run in Benet's 5-4 victory in the Class 3A Kaneland Regional championship game. Rooney's first home run of the season, coming in the fifth inning, capped a five-run rally by the second-seeded Redwings (23-12), who advance to the Kaneland Sectional semifinals to play top-seeded Burlington Central at 4:30 p.m. Wednesday. Third-seeded Kaneland (25-11) led 2-0 when junior second baseman Nathan Cerocke and senior third baseman Merrick Sullivan led off the inning with singles for Benet. Senior right fielder Luke Wildes walked to load the bases for senior center fielder Josh Gugora, who hit a slow tapper to third. An errant throw home allowed two runs to score. Rooney followed with his decisive swing. 'Off the bat, I was excited because, all right, at least that's one, you know, if it was a sac fly,' Benet co-coach Jorge Acosta said. 'He caught enough to backspin it, and it just kept going and got out of here. It was awesome, a good moment for him.' Rooney has had many good moments this season. The Redwings originally planned to use him as a pitcher, but he impressed so much at first base during the preseason that he earned the starting spot there. 'He's been one of our biggest clutch hitters all year long,' Acosta said. 'I think this is his fourth or fifth game-winning hit. 'He had a couple walk-off hits back-to-back days against Naperville North and Carmel. He's very calm in big spots and keeps things simple. He just finds a barrel, and good things happen.' Not much good was happening in this game for the Redwings, who had mustered only two singles off Kaneland junior pitcher Hayden Foster through the first four innings. But Foster's day was done after Rooney's homer. 'I just had to stay relaxed just like any other at-bat,' Rooney said. 'You can't tense up in those tough moments but just got to show up for your team.' The Redwings know they can rely on Rooney to do so. 'He's been huge all year coming through in big spots,' Benet senior pitcher Gino Zagorac said. 'As a sophomore especially, it's tough. 'There's a lot of pressure on you, but he's thrived through all the pressure, and he's came up in big spots for us a lot throughout the year. You've got to give a lot of credit to him for staying composed.' Zagorac (3-2), a Wichita State recruit, stayed composed despite some struggles with command. He walked four and hit a batter but allowed only two hits and struck out six, leaving after issuing a leadoff walk in the sixth. 'It was tough in the beginning trying to find my all my pitches, and then as the game went on, I was able to throw three pitches in the zone for strikes,' Zagorac said. 'That helped me keep them off balance and battle through even though I didn't have my best stuff.' Benet junior Lucas Kohlmeyer pitched two innings to get the save. Rooney helped him by making a diving catch for the first out of the seventh inning and then grabbed a grounder and tossed the ball to Kohlmeyer for the second out. Northwestern-bound senior Jake Rifenburg is scheduled to pitch for Benet on Wednesday. Zagorac said 'the entire school' has confidence in Rifenburg, while Rooney said the Redwings have confidence in themselves. 'We've been battling all year, but we just got to keep going,' Rooney said. 'We're just going to keep winning games, eventually getting to state. That's the goal.'
The 42
3 days ago
- Sport
- The 42
Rooney's second-minute spot kick maintains excellent form for Bohs
Bohemians 1 Derry City 0 Paul Buttner reports from Dalymount Park DAYLE ROONEY PROVED spot on for the second time in a fortnight as resurgent Bohemians maintained their excellent form. Winger Rooney's second minute penalty proved the only goal of an intriguing game as a shockingly disjointed Derry couldn't build on their recent fine record in Phibsborough. A seventh win from their last nine games, and fifth from six at Dalymount Park, sees Bohemians, second bottom of the table two month ago, regain third place in the Premier Division table. Derry slip to sixth place. With one change from their narrow defeat at Drogheda United last week, as Archie Meekison came in for Collie Whelan, Bohemians had the dream start when awarded a penalty with just 20 seconds on the watch. Captain Dawson Devoy, Rooney and Ross Tierney set up James Clarke whose shot from the edge of the area struck Derry skipper Mark Connolly on the arm. Referee Rob Hennessy had no hesitation in pointing to the spot. As he did with the winner against Shelbourne two weeks ago, Rooney scored emphatically from 12 yards with a rising drive to the roof of the net. Derry briefly enjoyed a spell of possession, though laboured to make any headway in the final third. And it was Bohemians who looked far more threatening when they got forward, really stretching Derry at the back with a double chance on 18 minutes. First a break down the left by Meekison set up Tierney whose shot was headed away by Carl Winchester. The Derry defensive midfielder was well positioned once again seconds later to block a shot from Devoy as Derry, at sixes and sevens at the back, survived falling further behind. So much so, head coach Tiernan Lynch made a tactical switch when bringing on Gavin Whyte for Shane Ferguson in a switch from three at the back to a 4-3-3 formation. Advertisement It scarcely made a difference as Derry remained at sea defensively, surviving another double let-off on 38 minutes. Rooney caught the visitors' rearguard flat footed when dinking a delightful ball over the top for the run of Adam McDonnell who, stretching, lobbed over the crossbar. A mistake by centre-back Kevin Holt then gifted Clarke a sight of goal with Derry relieved to see the shot arrow wide. Further defensive frailty presented Clarke with another opening a minute before the break which he rifled over the top. Derry made three changes at the break with Kevin Holt, Hayden Cann and winger Michael Duffy substituted as Ronan Boyce, Ben Doherty and Dom Thomas came on in another reshuffle. Bohemians, though, remained on the front foot with Jordan Flores flashing a header from a Devoy corner wide before the home skipper was perhaps fortunate not to concede a penalty when appearing to push over Danny Mullen. It was the 70th minute before Derry carved their first real chance of the game, Niall Morahan doing exceptionally well to take the ball off substitute Robbie Benson's toe from Adam O'Reilly low cross. Impressive loanee Sean Grehan, on his final appearance before returning to Crystal Palace, showed his defensive quality to deflect a drive from Thomas over the top as Derry chased an equaliser. But, as they had started, it was Bohemians who finished the stronger, with substitutes Rhys Brennan and Whelan, twice, close to extending their lead. Derry's night to forget all but summed up by the sending off of Benson on 82 minutes for a foul on Keith Buckley, his second booking. Bohemians: Chorazka; Morahan (McManus, 87), Grehan, Cornwall, Flores; Devoy, McDonnell (Buckley, 65); Rooney, Tierney (Mountney, 87), Meekison (Brennan, 65); Clarke (Whelan, 74). Derry City: Maher; Cann (Doherty, h-t; Benson, 60), Connolly, Holt (Thomas, h-t); Ferguson (Whyte, 24), O'Reilly, Winchester, Todd; McMullan, Duffy (R. Boyce, h-t); Mullen. Referee: Rob Hennessy (Clare).
RTÉ News
3 days ago
- Sport
- RTÉ News
Dayle Rooney penalty sinks Derry and keeps Bohs upwardly mobile
Dayle Rooney proved spot on for the second time in a fortnight as resurgent Bohemians maintained their excellent form in the SSE Airtricity Men's Premier Division. Winger Rooney's second-minute penalty was the only goal of an intriguing game as a shockingly disjointed Derry couldn't build on their recent fine record in Phibsborough. A seventh win from their last nine games, and fifth from six at Dalymount Park, sees Bohemians, second bottom of the table two month ago, regain third place in the table. Derry slip to sixth. With one change from their narrow defeat at Drogheda United last week, Archie Meekison coming in for Collie Whelan, Bohemians had the dream start when awarded a penalty with just 20 seconds on the watch. Captain Dawson Devoy, Rooney and Ross Tierney set up James Clarke whose shot from the edge of the area struck Derry skipper Mark Connolly on the arm. Referee Rob Hennessy had no hesitation in pointing to the spot. As he did with the winner against Shelbourne two weeks ago, Rooney scored emphatically from 12 yards with a rising drive to the roof of the net. Derry briefly enjoyed a spell of possession, though laboured to make any headway in the final third. And it was Bohemians who looked far more threatening when they got forward, really stretching Derry at the back with a double chance on 18 minutes. First a break down the left by Meekison set up Tierney whose shot was headed away by Carl Winchester. The Derry defensive midfielder was well positioned once again seconds later to block a shot from Devoy as Derry, at sixes and sevens at the back, survived falling further behind. So much so, head coach Tiernan Lynch made a tactical switch when bringing on Gavin Whyte for Shane Ferguson in a switch from three at the back to a 4-3-3 formation. It scarcely made a difference as Derry remained at sea defensively, surviving another double let-off on 38 minutes. Rooney caught the visitors' rearguard flat footed when dinking a delightful ball over the top for the run of Adam McDonnell who, stretching, lobbed over the crossbar. A mistake by centre-back Kevin Holt then gifted Clarke a sight of goal with Derry relieved to see the shot arrow wide. Further defensive frailty presented Clarke with another opening a minute before the break which he rifled over the top. Derry made three changes at the break with Kevin Holt, Hayden Cann and winger Michael Duffy substituted as Ronan Boyce, Ben Doherty and Dom Thomas came on in another reshuffle. Bohemians, though, remained on the front foot with Jordan Flores flashing a header from a Devoy corner wide before the home skipper was perhaps fortunate not to concede a penalty when appearing to push over Danny Mullen. It was the 70th minute before Derry carved their first real chance of the game, Niall Morahan doing exceptionally well to take the ball off substitute Robbie Benson's toe from Adam O'Reilly low cross. Impressive loanee Sean Grehan, on his final appearance before returning to Crystal Palace, showed his defensive quality to deflect a drive from Thomas over the top as Derry chased an equaliser. But, as they had started, it was Bohemians who finished the stronger, with substitutes Rhys Brennan and Whelan, twice, close to extending their lead. Derry's night to forget all but summed up by the sending off of Benson on 82 minutes for a foul on Keith Buckley, his second booking. Bohemians: Kacper Chorazka; Niall Morahan (James Mcmanus 87), Sean Grehan, Rob Cornwall, Jordan Flores; Dawson Devoy, Adam McDonnell (Keith Buckley 65); Dayle Rooney, Ross Tierney (John Mountney 87), Archie Meekison (Rhys Brennan 65); James Clarke (Collie Whelan 74). Derry City: Brian Maher; Hayden Cann (Ben Doherty h-t; Robbie Benson 60), Mark Connolly, Kevin Holt (Dom Thomas h-t); Shane Ferguson (Gavin Whyte 24), Adam O'Reilly, Carl Winchester, Sam Todd; Paul McMullan, Michael Duffy (Ronan Boyce h-t); Danny Mullen. Attendance: 4,111.
