When Wayne Rooney was a mere 16-year-old, Clive Tyldesley famously asked us to remember his name.

He was talking to football fans, but he could just as easily have been tipping off those media commentators who hate to see working-class footballers become wealthy, as Rooney has managed to keep their supplies of moral outrage well-stocked ever since.

His most recent fall from grace involved going on an all-day bender and attempting to drive a woman home who wasn’t his wife.

As well as public humiliation, a long stay in the doghouse and a driving ban, Rooney was sentenced to 100 hours in a garden centre working with adults with learning difficulties.

He’s now halfway through that sentence, and eulogising about it.

Ex-England skipper Rooney's community service has been a pleasure not a chore (
Image:
Daily Mirror)

“I’m really enjoying it, working with these people, helping them with different things. It’s a refreshing place to go and it’s relaxing and I’ll certainly keep in touch when my hours are over,” he said.

Rooney’s new-found serenity has been evidenced in an Everton shirt, scoring six times in his last five league games.

It would be lovely to think that the 32-year-old’s rediscovery of appetite and focus is not just down to the arrival of Sam Allardyce, but the chastening experience of remembering his humble roots and giving something back.

Lovely, as it might inspire him to ring up his old team-mate Juan Mata and ask to be signed up for his Common Goal charity , which sees one per cent of a football person’s salary go towards giving opportunities to some of the poorest kids in the world.

United star Mata hosted children from a Mumbai slum at Old Trafford earlier this season (
Image:
Oscar Foundation/Instagram)

German and Italian superstars Mats Hummels and Giorgio Chiellini have joined the project, which uses football for social change across 80 countries, but no-one of their stature in the English game has.

Indeed, only Bournemouth’s Charlie Daniels, Alfie Mawson of Swansea, Sunderland’s Duncan Watmore, Bruno Saltor of Brighton and Leicester’s Kasper Schmeichel have.

Which seems a pitifully low number as the scheme has been going since August, and strangely lacking in the sort of household-name players who could raise not only the most money but Common Goal’s profile.

And not just players.

If UEFA president Aleksander Ceferin is signing over one per cent of his wages to the cause, what about club chief executives, agents and managers who have seen their pay and bonuses rocket in the past decade?

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One per cent of Premier League managers’ combined annual pay-offs alone would probably help build a new community centre in Batley and three in Bangladesh.

To be fair, many footballers have their own preferred charities they give generously to, so perhaps don’t feel the need to join Common Goal.

But that lets off many who don’t, who are too uncaring or unpressured to do what Watmore is doing. Which, in his words is “just giving back.”

I spoke to someone at a big club recently who argued that as TV keeps fuelling the growth of wage packets, increasingly alienating players and managers from the fans, it’s in their interests to be seen giving some of that cash to good causes.

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He spoke of introducing a clause, similar to organ donation, whereby clubs sign up to the one per cent rule, and whenever an employee joins on a salary higher than £1 million-a-year, contributions will be taken from their wages and passed on to a chosen cause — unless they decide to opt-out.

An option that wouldn’t do their brand many favours.

It’s a brilliant idea.

Apart from the fact they wouldn’t notice the missing money, it would mean the next time a player or manager was lambasted by a moral judge for being a grasping, self-obsessed prima donna they could turn round and ask: “Well how much are you giving back.”

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Should football's big-money contracts include clauses donating 1% of the wages to charity?