Rooney's Gold Competition

Throughout the whole of June we're giving three lucky winners the opportunity to grab a copy of Rooney's Gold by John Sweeney. All you have to do is answer the question below.

Closing date for entry to the competition is 10th July 2010

The uncensored life of the nation’s greatest footballer, and the people who have sought to exploit his gifts.

The life and times of Wayne Rooney is a dysfunctional fairy story of our time – Beauty and the Beast meets Alien v. Predator meets Cinderella in Football Boots. This is the story of the rise and fall and rise again of Wayne Rooney, a boy from the mean streets of broken Britain – few streets meaner than Croxteth in Liverpool – who lifted himself out of poverty by his footballing genius, to play for Manchester United and England. On the pitch (most of the time) a hero. Off it, the centrepiece, with his wife Coleen, of perhaps the most vacuous media soap opera of modern times.

Wayne Rooney was a tabloid angel who became a demon overnight when it was alleged he’d been having sex with a PVC-clad grannie called the Auld Slapper. He shrugged off the abuse and carried on scoring goals. Lots of them. He can be bad-tempered and he can use bad language, but there’s no doubting his passion for the beautiful game – and a basic, street-level sense of fair play.

Rough, working class, surrounded by an unlikely crew – including a controversial agent, a crooked lawyer, tarts and gangsters - Rooney’s Gold looks at the characters who have been attracted to the fabulous money Rooney gets for kicking a pig’s bladder around a field. Some of them will not enjoy reading this book. One of them – his agent Paul Stretford, fined and banned for nine months by the Football Association - did his best to stop it.

Despite the odds Rooney has become the model husband and father. And he changes the electricity of a football game the moment he walks on the pitch.

John Sweeney’s book is certainly no hagiography. Irreverent, hilarious and surprising, Rooney’s Gold is a warts-and-all biography of England’s most famous sportsman and the iniquities of some of those who have sought their pound of flesh. It’s an attack on how Big Money taxes our passion for football and an attack on our moronic celebrity culture. But it is, above all, the story of a boy who, despite all the forces pulling him down, rose up to become a hero.

John Sweeney is one of the BBC’s leading investigative journalists. He says: ‘this is a story about an angry potato by an exploding tomato.’

For review copies, interview and comment requests and further information contact james.stephens@bitebackpublishing.com 020 7091 1266

How many Manchester United players are going to the World Cup with the England squad?

Please provide us with the following information so that we can get in touch and send you a copy of Rooney's gold if you're one of the lucky winners. Please note, we won't share your information with any third parties.