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It has been apparent, probably since mankind appeared on earth, that the male of the species should carry a government health warning. But never before has one slim volume so identified the atrocities involved when you actually marry one of the creatures.
Footballers' Wives, by Shelley Webb, wife of the former England and Manchester United midfielder, Neil Webb, is one of the greatest advertisements you will find for out-and-out lesbianism. Wonderfully for her marriage and sanity, she doesn't think so. "I still love the football world," she said, mid-champers, in a quiet post-shopping moment last week.
You pounce. Shopping! You knew it. There she is: airhead clich_. Probably a hairdresser, married a footballer just for the kudos and corny stretches of glittering Lycra in which to wrap her inevitable buxomness at parties. Except that S Webb is an author, broadcaster and producer with a first-class honours degree in English and history, mother of two (single mother of two when she left her husband briefly, unable to stand his gloom any longer) and while she has just had blonde highlights put in her hair, no one could accuse her of bimboism.
Her book is entirely about renouncing myths and the celebration of supernaturally-strong women who suffer all kinds of indignities with the laughter and honesty that was edited out of football clubs aeons ago.
"What do you mean, you HAD to?" Karen Wrigley is saying to husband Steven, once of Nottingham Forest, in the book. Her dearly beloved has just described a day's training under Brian Clough, which consisted of the "whole silly lot" running through a field of stinging nettles. She cannot understand it. Why don't they just say: "No. Get off, Cloughie. It might hurt." They don't, of course, poor terror-struck wretches, and at once you have identified the whole sheep-like, foot-soldier mentality of the average professional footballer. Then they come home, stick their stung legs on the coffee table, and want to be nursed and cosseted.
This is an entirely different thing to the groupies, who would most certainly dress up in nurses' uniforms for their chosen man/men.
Helen Saunders, wife of Dean, describes a hilariously-horrific scene at some post-match Liverpool do where four young girls squeezed...