Wayne Rooney’s 50-yard goal and hat trick couldn’t have come at a better time

When people say that football is a game of opinions, they mean a lot of things. Sometimes they mean "I reserve the right to disagree with the referee, even though they know the laws and I don't." Other times they mean, "I don't think this player should be playing, even though their manager thinks they are good, for I think they are bad." And a lot of the time, they're really saying "There is nothing that can happen on a football pitch, however straightforwardly brilliant or plainly wondrous, that somebody can't dismiss as being overrated."

And that's all fine. Having opinions is a game of opinions. But it did mean that when Wayne Rooney hammered the ball into West Ham United’s net from inside his own half on Wednesday night, prompting general did you see that? mayhem around the country, it didn't take long for the thought "Yeah, but was it actually that great?" to come along. Maybe this thought appeared inside your own head. Maybe it was delivered to you by a nearby West Ham fan, or by your social media network of choice. But it arrived, an unwelcome guest to ruin the party.

In an odd sort of a way, goals from inside one's own half are perhaps the easiest genre of great goal to diminish or discount. After all, even the shinniest of overhead kicks involves some delicate timing while being literally upside down. Shouldn't any professional footballer be able to hit an untended 8-by-24-foot target from 50-odd yards?

Luckily, on this occasion we can ignore the cavilling. It was great. And it was great even by the standards of the genre. The Premier League's go-to example for this kind of thing has been, at least until now, David Beckham's goal against Wimbledon. This is the classic form of the goal: The player looks up, the ball takes flight, and all the keeper can manage is a sad hop as the ball flies into the net. It helps, of course, that Beckham's form when kicking a football was a sight deserving of immortality in marble.

Rooney's two own-half goals against West Ham, however, have both been different. His first, for Manchester United in 2014, was a peculiar thing, a swinging, hopeful volley that bamboozled the keeper in flight. Adrian ends up sprawled on one side of the six-yard box as the ball drops down the middle. It was very funny. It was a bit of a mess.

This one, though, was a different beast. A stun-drive that broke all the conventions. It flew low and hard, nearly hitting the referee in the stomach, just passing the outstretched fingertips of a West Ham defender. Poor Joe Hart didn't even get a chance to collapse into his net in performative desperation; it flew so flat and fast and true that he was still jogging back into his penalty area, looking bemused. A keeper not so much chipped or lobbed as bazooka'd.

In truth, the most persuasive testament to the quality of such goals comes from the players themselves. Whatever your views on ex-professional punditry, and the biases and blind spots it brings, it seems reasonable to conclude that most of them have a pretty decent handle on kicking a ball. On how to do it, on what's easy and what isn't. Last time Rooney did this, that other West Ham goal, Steve Bruce — that's hard-bitten central defender and crime novelist Steve Bruce, a man with a double black diamond nose — interrupted a press conference when he saw the replay by collapsing into a fit of giggles. We’re assuming it was at the quality; it might have been the goalkeeping.

This time, on BT Sport in the UK, viewers were treated to Robbie Savage losing the run of himself. That in itself might not be enough to sway a jury. But then Owen Hargreaves claimed that Rooney "may never have scored a better goal in his life," and Rooney said that he may never have hit a football better. Rio Ferdinand, meanwhile, singled out Rooney's "audacity."

Perhaps "audacity" is the most important word. Even if kicking a moving ball into an open goal from 50-odd yards was easy, doing so in an actual game means all sorts of complicated things. The opportunity has to be noticed, the shot has to be taken. At some level, shooting from inside one's half is a decision to take the least likely to succeed, and therefore stupidest, option available. The odds, the precedents, the xG … nothing is in your favour. Even if the keeper's making a fool of himself out of shot. That's where true brilliance lies: Going for the stupid thing, and nailing it.

In any case, even if one casts aspersions on the quality of the goal, it could not have been more perfect in its timing. Wednesday night's game wasn't just a face-off between the two most dysfunctional teams in the Premier League. For Everton, it was also the last game before Sam Allardyce strides into the place and starts working his own distinctive flavour of magic. Many Everton fans are greeting this with a certain apprehension. Some with outright contempt.

As such, there could be no better way to round off this turbulent period of Everton's history than with a comfortable win, punctuated with a ridiculous goal. However technically good such goals are, however many opinions people might contrive to hold about them, nobody ever watched their team score one without laughing themselves silly in the best possible way. A spoonful of sugar, just as the medicine arrives in town.