Ex-WAG lifts lid on league groupies

She's a WAG gone wild … with a pen, and she's written a book high on cocaine, sex, binge-drinking, groupies and football. Shireen Lolesi, a former footballer's wife, has documented life as a rugby league WAG - Wife and Girlfriend - spinning a tale of infidelity, subservience, loyalty, betrayal and love.

Wives And Girlfriends is fiction, but the beauty salon owner's nine-year marriage to the former Raider, Tiger and Bulldogs rugby league player Jamaal Lolesi was not. And she knows about the drug use in the National Rugby League, the affairs and the lengths groupies will go to.

In her book, the vivacious 28-year-old mother of two reveals how groupies can be a footballer's worst predator, sometimes even taking the form of a WAG sister.

"I despise groupies," she says. "I don't think there's a place in this world for them. They literally will do anything. They will research where the footballers are going to be, what hotel, what nightclub, things about their personal life.

"They put themselves in a position of attack. They are like predators. They will go up to a footballer and just say; 'Will you go home with me tonight?' They will not wear underwear. And let's be honest, what male is going to say no?

"You get a select few footballers who are strong and faithful. But really they are young and are in a very strange world that's fast-paced and full of girls throwing themselves at them."

In Wives And Girlfriends footballers high on a grand final win drink, snort cocaine and have sex with groupies in front of their teammates. Another group sex incident is also alluded to.

Back in the real world, Lolesi believes Matthew Johns - named as a participant in group sex on a club tour seven years ago and subsequently stood down from his TV job on The Footy Show - is a victim. "He did not commit a crime - this is a girl that happily had sex with him and a few others. Why does he have to pay a humungous price for this?"

She says she admired his wife, Trish Johns, for her "strength and bravery".

"No one wants their husband dragged through the mud. I've had it, but not on a personal level," she says

Shireen and her ex-husband were with the Bulldogs club when the Coffs Harbour sex scandal occurred in 2004. Like most of the players, Jamaal Lolesi faced questioning. Shireen was sent to the Gold Coast but could not escape the "horrific" press.

"I was kind-of whisked away to be out of sight, out of mind," she says. "It was a pretty horrific time for all of the partners of the Bulldogs players … when your partner is accused of something so horrific all you can do is stand by them until they are proven guilty in a court of law or they admit guilt to you.

"Neither of those things happened to me and I stood by my husband at that time."

The book is set in Sydney's eastern suburbs and revolves around Angel, wife of the Gladiators star Drew Blakely. She is having an affair with the handsome young Jimmy Sheldon.

Shireen Lolesi says that within football clubs infidelity was "almost" a rite of passage and within their own small NRL world it was common.

She was therefore not surprised when the affair between the AFL's Kangaroos captain Wayne Carey and his teammate's wife Kelli Stevens emerged.

"When you've got a good-looking team and you are always together every week at functions and at each others' houses … I think in any world that could be a recipe for disaster."

She says she penned the book as "self-therapy" during her marriage breakdown, but she was also desperate to use her brain.

While she enjoyed her WAG role and made lifelong friendships, she says her experience was very similar to that of a "1950s housewife".

Like Angel, Lolesi's life once revolved around football games.

"When you are in it, it is normal. Now that I'm out of it, I think how bizarre that world was. It was very surreal," she says. "Your whole life, as a partner of a footballer, is solely about the footballer. I felt like that I was an appendage to Jamaal. I wasn't my own person.

"At the time that was completely what I wanted to do. I chose to have children, leave the career behind and be the doting housewife. When you are married to a footballer you can't be an independent woman. You are his secondary human. You are his personal assistant, his lover, best friend and confidante and it's a lot of pressure.

"My life was about preparing for that game that weekend."

However, she acknowledges the public perceived her life as glamorous and that she expected the fans' admiring stares. Like her main character, Lolesi paid a lot of attention to her outfits because of them.

"I always wanted to look my best because I was a reflection of my husband," she says. "I didn't want to embarrass him in any way. I wanted to look good for him because people would match you and say, 'which one is that, that's Lolesi's wife' and I wanted to look good for him and myself. I didn't want them to think, 'Oh, that's Lolesi's wife.'

"It's not the glamorous hoity-toity world it can be in cricket and soccer. I think that's because the girls in rugby league are real girls. There's not that many models or high-profile girls. Our job is to support our men."

She drew inspiration for her book from those around her at the Canterbury Bulldogs club, from her best WAG friends and the likes of NRL stars Willie Mason and Braith Anasta. But no character is based solely on one particular footballer or WAG.

"The characters are a merge and combination of a lot of different things I've seen over that decade in that sport," she says. "It's not one for one because, God bless them, they really couldn't give me enough to be a sole character."

Lolesi now goes by her maiden name Collett but has a very amicable relationship with her former husband. The pair are solid friends. They married as teenagers and have two boys Jamin, 8, and Shaelem, 6.

Has her former husband read the book? "He hasn't read it," she says. "But he's been really supportive of the book."

- © Fairfax NZ News