Brian Viner: So why did I miss Rooney's goal? Blame a brontosaurus

With Sports Report blaring from a radio I started ululating like a madman

Being an intellectually shallow sort of chap, my favourite beginning to a book is not the first chapter of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice, nor the opening lines of A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens, but the first couple of pages of Colin Shindler's Manchester United Ruined My Life.

I have shared this with you before but it bears repeating. Shindler writes about a Manchester City defender called Bobby Kennedy, who joined City from Kilmarnock for £45,000 in 1961. In the 1967-68 season, when City won the championship, Kennedy played a useful supporting role as a utility back. Then, on the morning of June 5, 1968, Shindler was awakened when his neighbour Martyn Jones burst into his room at Caius College, Cambridge, shouting that Bobby Kennedy had been shot.

"The news caused me to sit bolt upright in bed. 'Why the hell would anyone shoot Bobby Kennedy?' I asked. 'We've just won the League.'

"'They've killed him!' Martyn shouted, even more loudly. 'Well, he was only a reserve,' I responded reasonably, still puzzled as to why Martyn should be so concerned."

As well as being very funny, this story has resonance for me, for I too remember where I was when I heard the news of Robert Kennedy's assassination; I was six years old, returning from a family holiday in Barnstaple, Devon, and on the car radio "Congratulations" by Cliff Richard was interrupted by a news flash. I remember my father, aghast, pulling into a lay-by to gather himself.

For the sports devotee, of course, there are lots of those "I remember where I was when..." moments. For example, I will never forget where I was when Linford Christie won the 100 metres final at the Barcelona Olympics (slumped on my sofa, from which I then sprung with such excitement that, unlike Linford who did several laps of honour, I sustained a nasty groin strain) and when England beat Cameroon in the 1990 World Cup quarter-final (on a plane from Lisbon to London, being updated by a pilot whose fervour was slightly unnerving; we wanted him to hold the wheel or whatever pilots do, not punch the air).

Nor, being an Evertonian, will I ever forget where I was when I saw 16-year-old Wayne Rooney becoming the youngest Premiership goalscorer with a thrilling strike that ended a 30-match unbeaten record by the champions, Arsenal – a goal which had Arsène Wenger enthusing about the greatest talent he has seen since arriving in England.

However, this memory will be an enduring source of regret as well as pleasure. You see, I should have been watching from the directors' box at Goodison Park, a guest of the match sponsor, Hat Trick Productions, having first enjoyed an excellent lunch, great camaraderie, and a tour of the dressing-rooms. But a domestic accident late on Friday night involving a close relative, a green plastic brontosaurus known to my culpable younger son as Bronty, a staircase and a badly fractured ankle, put paid to all of that.

My relative (who wishes not to be identified, citing great embarrassment at the sitcom nature of the accident) urged me on Saturday morning to go to the match regardless of her need for further hospital treatment, and at 8.45 I duly set off for the station, but after 20 minutes of wrestling with my conscience, my conscience pinned me down with a powerful half-Nelson. I turned back.

After the hollow consolation of being congratulated by various family members for doing the Right Thing, I left a message for my host Jimmy Mulville – the Dixie Dean, the Tommy Lawton, hell, the Bob Latchford of television executives – to say that I wouldn't be at the match. Just to keep up the sitcom nature of proceedings, there then ensued an effort in the manner of Bob and Terry in The Likely Lads to avoid hearing the result.

For I genuinely fancied Everton to beat Arsenal. I'm not sure why. Maybe it was something to do with a snatch of commentary by Trevor Brooking during the England match last Wednesday. "Can they hold on to it, Macedonia, the lead?" he said, and when Trevor, normally the embodiment of neatness and precision, starts getting his sentences back to front, you can be sure that the world has gone a bit topsy-turvy.

Anyway, if I couldn't see the thing live, at least I could ensure next best, and watch it not knowing the score, which is why at 5pm, passing a greengrocer's shop in Ludlow with the Sports Report theme blaring from a radio, I started ululating like a madman.

Eventually, I made it safely to 10.30pm, realised from a flicker of one of Des Lynam's eyebrow hairs that something dramatic had happened, and settled down to watch, as apprehensive as I was hopeful that it would prove to have been a great afternoon to be an Everton fan, which of course it did.

And we've got another one coming up on Thursday, when Rooney turns 17 and signs a three-year contract. It's my own birthday the following day, but his I'll celebrate more.

b.viner@independent.co.uk