Rebekah Vardy the wife of England soccer player Jamie Vardy arrives at the High Court, in London. Photo / AP
Rebekah Vardy the wife of England soccer player Jamie Vardy arrives at the High Court, in London. Photo / AP
Opinion
OPINION:
They think it's all over. It is now. When Kenneth Wolstenholme uttered those immortal words back in 1966 to scenes of untrammelled joy, football was the real winner.
As the final whistle blew at the High Court this week on Rebekah Vardy versus Coleen Rooney there was no jubilation.No giddiness. No Chanel sweaters pulled up over heads. Just a sense of finality as this unedifying she-said-she-said bitchfest – over the source of various leaks to the media following a 'sting operation' by Rooney – marked a cataclysmic end to the Age of the Wags.
The verdict will be announced in due course. But whether you class the £3 million ($5.8 million) grudge match as a bang or a whimper, this monstrously self-indulgent libel case is essentially a 21st century iteration of the asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs 66 million years ago, bringing their 180 million-year dominance to a close.
Unlike the triceratops, the Wags' undisputed rule lasted just 16 years. But, rather like those extravagant hair extensions, in the public imagination it seemed much, much longer.
It began in Baden-Baden, 2006. I vividly remembered Victoria Beckham leading her Wag crew through the sleepy pedestrianised spa town like a re-enactment of Reservoir Dogs styled by Dolce & Gabbana.
Sorry if it sounds a bit lame now, but honestly back then it was a glamazonian parade the likes of which we had never before witnessed. Look at the pictures immortalising the key moments and you'll even see Coleen strategically tucked behind superstar Victoria in the stands; exactly the same look-at-me, status-by-association power move Rebekah was subsequently accused of pulling.
The headlines, the rumours, the myths were nothing short of Ab Fab. Victoria Beckham supposedly bringing 60 pairs of sunglasses with her, bottles of Veuve Clicquot drunk through straws, the £57,000 hour-long shopping trip and wild karaoke nights.
It was all a far cry from 1966, when the England squad's only contact with their wives during the victorious World Cup campaign was a joint outing to the shops in Golders Green. Bless.
Moreover, in the intervening 40 years, the nation's relationship with celebrity had dramatically evolved. While Tina Moore, Norma Charlton and Judith Hurst passed by unnoticed on their eve-of-the-final theatre trip to The Black And White Minstrel Show (yes, really, folks), their 2006 counterparts had their every pout lovingly recorded by OK!, Closer, Heat and Hello.
Before the Wags even touched down in Germany, they were channelling the best of Footballers' Wives when Elen Rives missed her flight after attempting to board with five large pieces of hand luggage.
Coleen Rooney, wife of former England soccer player Wayne Rooney, arrives at the High Court. Photo / AP
Didn't they know who she was? They sure as heck did once she leapt on a nightclub table in Baden-Baden and belted out I Will Survive.
Inevitably, the Wags got the blame for England's defeat that year. "It was a bit of a circus," Rio Ferdinand ruefully observed in 2008. "Football almost became a secondary element to the main event. People were worrying more about what people were wearing or where people were going than the England football team."
By people, he probably meant Wags. In 2006, these women provided a veritable feast of tabloid fodder. Overnight they were catapulted to household names, and the acronym 'Wives And Girlfriends' joined the popular lexicon.
Initially their Faustian pact with the red tops was a mutually beneficial relationship and added gaiety to the nation as well as glitziness to the game.
Rightly or wrongly (wrongly) the term Wag became shorthand for working class aspiration and achievement; what young woman didn't dream of days spent shopping and lunching, late night Champagne and, of course, standing by her man? All in vertiginous heels.
It's impossible not to squirm at the overt sexism baked into the very term. Just last year singer Frankie Bridge denounced it as a form of disparagement. Bridge, who found fame in girl group The Saturdays long before she met Wayne, 40, admitted she found it difficult suddenly being labelled a Wag.
"I found it really frustrating because I'd think to myself 'I've worked for years in the public eye, they know I have my own career and even if I didn't, why am I now just this thing because I am married to someone who plays a sport? It is used as a derogatory term and that's why I don't like it."
Her point is ably illustrated by the fact Harry Kane's wife, Katie Goodland, is a sports science graduate. Harry Maguire's wife, Fern Hawkins, is a physiotherapist with a first class honours degree and Raheem Sterling's girlfriend, Paige Milian, has a property empire and an accountancy qualification.
There's more; Reece James' partner Mia-Florence McClenaghan has a law degree and Ashleigh Behan, girlfriend of Kalvin Phillips, is university graduate turned established makeup artist, who also runs her own salon.
I think we can all agree that Wags – while perhaps technically accurate – is a dated, reductive way to refer to these women, who are conspicuously successful in their own right.
When this generation of wives and girlfriends post pictures on social media, they are more likely to be in gym wear, drinking green juice than knocking back vodka and Red Bull behind VIP ropes. They are the future.
And so we turn back to the empty High Court, echoing with the sounds of Coleen and Rebekah, husbands in tow, dragging one another's reputation through the mud.
Although say what you like about Rebekah (actually on second thoughts don't, you'll end up on the stand) she managed to trash her own reputation so comprehensively that it was often difficult to believe she was the litigant rather than the accused.
We were enthralled, amused, entertained. But Wagatha Christie is no more -– the ultimate Waga Saga has drawn to a close and with it the high-octane, high-maintenance reign of Wives and Girlfriends who not only stole their men's thunder but captured the hearts of the nation. We will not see their like again. I hope. Wag RIP.
