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The big man is back! Wayne Rooney celebrates his match winner.Photo Credit:Scott HeaveyThis time, the big man really is back. Finally unleashed on Euro 2012, Wayne Rooney shook off his ring-rustiness to score the goal that took England into the quarter-finals. 

 

The nightmares that have haunted him from past tournaments, the sending-off from 2006, the misery of 2010, are already less vivid now.

 

And now, as England prepare to travel to Kiev to face Italy on Sunday, the stage is set for him at last.

 

It is more than a month since he started a match of any kind so he was never going to be at his best last night. But he got stronger and stronger as the match went on and, his confidence bolstered, he should be at his sharpest in the Olympic Stadium.

 

Even lacking match fitness, Rooney proved in the 86 minutes he played why Roy Hodgson had never even considered not bringing him straight back into the first team.

 

He gave England a subtlety and a range of options they had lacked before. And even if he could not turn creator, he showed his versatility with a poacher's goal instead.

 

Rooney had not scored at a tournament for eight years going into last night's match.

 

His two goals against Croatia at the Estadio da Luz in the second round of Euro 2004 have stayed with him like a rebuke the longer his barren run continued. There are some extenuating circumstances. He was not close to being fully fit at the 2006 World Cup and England missed out on 2008 altogether.

 

And at the 2010 World Cup in South Africa, he admitted that Fabio Capello's mismanagement of the build-up meant his head had 'gone a bit already' before the tournament had even begun.

 

But when he spoke to the English media at the team's base in Krakow at the weekend, Rooney seemed as positive and relaxed as he has ever been.

 

Like many of the other players, he seemed to have responded to Hodgson's man-management style. The departure of Capello appeared to have filled him with a sense of liberation.

 

There were also signs that after being sent off against Montenegro last October, Rooney had learned to curb his self-destructive tendencies.

 

His disciplinary record had been practically spotless since and Hodgson had dismissed fears that adrenaline would get the better of him after spending so long out of the action.

 

As it turned out, it was not over-exuberance that Hodgson needed to worry about but a lack of match sharpness.

 

Rooney's sharp football brain was in evidence from the start but it was as if his body would not obey.

 

Sure, when he finally got his first touch after five minutes, he skipped past a Ukraine defender as if he wasn't there.

 

But soon after, he let a lay-off from Danny Welbeck slide under his right foot as he tried to control it on the run.

 

He still produced moments of calm in a frantic match, moments where he slowed the play down and hinted at the creativity that no one else in this England team is capable of.

 

But then 15 minutes before half-time came another major tournament moment that he will have to peek at through his fingers if he ever dares watch it again.

 

John Terry fired a majestic cross-field pass to Ashley Young, Young curled in a perfect cross and found Rooney unmarked on the edge of the six yard box.

 

The goal gaped and the Ukrainian supporters held their breath but Rooney mistimed his header badly and glanced it well wide.

 

He looked over at Young and acknowledged the excellence of the delivery but his heart must have sunk.

 

What a start that would have been. What a return. What a boost for his confidence. Instead, the spectre of past failures loomed.

 

Not for long, though. Three minutes after half time, Gerrard  curled in a tantalizing cross from the right, the ball was deflected, the goalkeeper missed it and there was Rooney practically on the goal line to nod it into the net.

 

The England bench celebrated wildly, not just because England were ahead but because they knew what this meant.

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