Champagne, hookah pipes and dancing till sunrise – inside the WAGs big night out
FOOTBALLER Jordan Pickford has observed that the England team ‘need to be on our A-game’ when they play against Belgium tonight.
So, it is probably a blessing for them that the players were tucked up at their training base in Repino on Tuesday night — not waiting for their wives and girlfriends to totter back after their ‘quiet dinner’ in the early hours of Wednesday.
The dinner in St Petersburg, which introduced the Class of 2018 WAGs to the world, started quietly enough with a group photo outside an upmarket restaurant, but turned into a drunken romp which concluded —after much singing and dancing — as dawn was breaking.
It made Coleen Rooney and Victoria Beckham’s big nights out in Baden Baden at the 2006 World Cup look like a granny’s knitting circle.
Wine, wine and more wine, shisha pipes and selfies featured as the ladies belatedly celebrated England’s storming 6-1 victory over Panama.
Becky Vardy, publicity-hungry wife of striker Jamie was among the hardcore who saw the sun come up. The couple are infamous for their nights out — one football chant goes ‘Jamie Vardy is having a party’.
Naturally, photographers were on hand to take snaps — but this being the Instagram age, much of the fun was also captured by the women themselves, then shared on social media. So what happened when the WAGs went wild?
THE STARTING LINE UP
The picture of the WAGS in a row outside the restaurant seems to have been the brainchild of Queen Wag Becky Vardy.
Vardy, a veteran of I’m A Celebrity and numerous glossy magazine shoots, is very media-friendly and seems determined to make the most of this World Cup. It may be her last as husband Jamie is 31. Certainly photographers were on hand to catch her and her pals posing on Tuesday night.
From left to right they pictured: Millie Savage, 24, the partner of John Stones, in a £1,500 Balmain jacket and £1,090 Yves St Laurent bag; Gemma Cahill, 32, wife of Gary Cahill, in jeans; Megan Davison, girlfriend of goalie Jordan Pickford, carrying a £2,239 rose-gold Chanel bag and, in the middle, Becky Vardy, 36, wearing a £663 playsuit by Australian brand Zimmerman.
Next was Annabel Peyton, the blonde ex air hostess girlfriend of reserve goalie Jack Butland, then Fern hawkins, the girlfriend of harry Maguire, in a red bodycon dress. Next was Shannon horlock, girlfriend of goalkeeper Nick Pope, in Valentino shoes and then Annie Kilner, the girlfriend of Kyle Walker in a red bodysuit. Last on the right was PR girl Lucia Loi, 22, the girlfriend of Marcus Rashford, wearing Valentino sandals.
THEIR SHADOWS . . .
A TEAM of men in dark suits lurked in the background. They are the security provided to look after the WAGs by the Football Association following heightened tension between England and Russia after the poisoning of ex spy Sergei Skripal.
WHERE IS THE TEAM?
The England team are in the hamlet of Repino, on the edge of the gulf of Finland, 20 miles north of St Petersburg.
The WAGs are staying in the city and travelling on a £10,000-a -head package arranged by the FA. They will travel 500 miles to and from Kaliningrad to watch the England game tonight separately from the players.
On Friday, the players will have a day off with their families. England manager Gareth Southgate said: ‘I don’t think there has ever been a tournament where the whole family has been in with us the whole time.
But will I encourage families to come and the lads to see them the day after a game, absolutely I will.’
In 2010, England boss Fabio Capello limited WAGs at the World Cup in South Africa to weekly visits, to avoid distractions. At the 2006 World Cup in Germany it was felt players were distracted by their families, who were in a hotel close by.
ON THE MENU?
The WAGs chose the fashionable Sunday Ginza restaurant on picturesque island Krestovskiy, on the edge of St Petersburg.
Styled after a summer house, it has a terrace. Cuisine is Usbek and European, with sushi.
Food averages £24 a head and runs to baked Brie and seafood pasta. A visitor from New Jersey claimed on TripAdvisor that it can attract a rather particular clientele, saying: ‘If you are model it is probably a place to go to find some mafia-looking boyfriend driving a BMW or more expensive cars.’
The WAGs started with pink champagne, and seemed to ignore World Cup matches shown on restaurant TVs.
They finished their meal around midnight and sat outside. A restaurant source said: ‘They all popped out onto the terrace and some were passing round two hookahs until quite late. There were clouds of smoke wafting around their table.’
Smoking a hookah pipe — or shisha — is hugely damaging. The British heart Foundation suggests one puff results in you inhaling as much smoke as you would from a whole cigarette.
A hookah has a bowl, smoke chamber and hose. Tobacco is sweetened with fruit or sugar to make the smoke more aromatic. Wood, coal or charcoal is used to heat the tobacco.
The smoker — and anyone near them — will take in smoke containing nicotine, tar, carbon monoxide and sometimes heavy metals like arsenic or lead.
The British heart Foundation says: ‘Shisha smokers are at risk of the same kinds of diseases as cigarette smokers, such as heart disease, cancer, respiratory disease and problems during pregnancy.’
After dinner the restaurant becomes a bar with a dancefloor,
as patrons enjoy a nightclub experience.
A source said the WAGs took to the nightclub, singing and dancing, although there is no photographic evidence . . . yet.
THE WINE FLOWS
Large balloon-shaped wine glasses twinkle in many of the pictures shared of the night.
Most of the Sunday Ginza wine list is expensive and imported. A bottle of Meursault, for instance, costs £200. The most expensive champagne is a rose Cristal at a whopping £975 per bottle.
I’M ON MY PHONE!
Checking their phones — for messages from their beloveds or maybe for media reports of their evening — were Annie kilner, who wore the nancy Dell-Olio style red catsuit and has three sons with kyle Walker, and Millie Savage, the partner of Manchester City’s John Stones.
SMOKING HOT
Becky Vardy, wife of Leicester City’s Jamie, shared a photo of Fern hawkins smoking a hookah at 11pm against the backdrop of a St Petersburg marina. The caption ‘lit’ was a pun — meaning ‘excellent’ in slang as well as indicating the pipe is lit.
in other pictures, Vardy herself is seen blowing out smoke and Gemma Cahill, 32, the wife of Chelsea defender Gary Cahill, can be seen passing the hookah to Annabel Peyton.
IT’S PUDDING TIME
Fern hawkins shared pictures of everyone’s desserts (all of which cost around £5), including a mango and passion fruit meringue, a strawberry cheesecake and a molten chocolate pudding served up with ice cream.
LAST ONE STANDING
Becky, 36, a mother of four, was one of the last women standing, posting an instagram snap of the sun rising over St Petersburg at 3.56am.
She wasn’t alone – Fern hawkins and Annabel Peyton cosied up for a series of pictures, all posted at 3.34am on Fern’s instagram. Did they look the worse for wear? Fern’s pouting selfie rather screams ‘big night’.
yesterday Vardy shared a picture of the line up, simply captioned: ‘Crew’.