Go North? you must be joking!

SUNDERLAND boss Roy Keane is angry. What has began as a simple match- preview press conference is now turning into a full-scale rant about the role of Wags - that's wives and girlfriends of Britain's footballers.

"Clearly their wives and girlfriends are running their lives and that is a bad sign," he says, warming to his theme considerably, watching the journalists' pens scribbling faster in their notebooks.

"When they go to a club just because it is in London and the clubs are not even that big, it is clearly, then, down to the shops...To me that player is weak because his wife runs his life. If they don't want to come to Sunderland because their wife wants to go shopping in London, then it is a sad state of affairs..."

His outburst highlights the rising power of the Wag and begs the question, what has happened to her obedient, stay-in-the-background predecessor? Compare the 1966 Wags, for example, with the wives of today. Interviewed for a national newspaper last year, Tina Moore, wife of the late England captain Bobby, said the Wags of 1966 were just ordinary girls who were happy to be at their husband's side.

Although the couple later acquired a Jaguar and the house of their dreams built on land in Chigwell, Essex, the party thrown after England's World Cup win consisted of only a few drinks with friends.

"Can you imagine that happening now?" she said.

Daphne Cohen, wife of England '66 team's right-back George, said the Wags of the World Cup weren't even invited to the celebration dinner afterwards.

"It's bad that we weren't invited too, but that was football - the women were kept separate," she said. "As wives, you were just invisible beings - just there in the background to give support."

"Invisible" and "background" are words that Victoria Beckham and Colleen McLoughlin are likely to struggle with today. The glow of the Wags' perma-tans alone could be picked up by Google Earth - like the orange rings around Ready Brek figures of old - over Los Angeles and Liverpool.

Victoria, of course, was the original Wag. The wife of England star David Beckham, Victoria saw her career nose- dive after the Spice Girls, only for her to build a new, highly lucrative career simply for being Mrs Beckham - fashion icon and muse, model and mother-of-three, and expert on all things size zero. She is worth millions in her own right, has produced perfumes, a range of jeans and accessories, a best-selling book, and has now secured a set of A-list friends in the form of TomKat (Tom Cruise and wife Katie Holmes) and Jennifer Lopez and Mr Lopez. She has even moved to Los Angeles with David and redefined the Wag-look - witness the chopped-off hair extensions and more fashion-orientated wardrobe as opposed to previous Wag staples of micro-minis and tiny T-shirts.

But in her place, Colleen has risen as Queen of the Wags. She has transformed herself from a stocky 17-year-old, with a penchant for moon boots and pink velour tracksuits, to being clad in vintage glamour with smooth locks (albeit still long). Her Eliza Doolittle-like transformation has seen the Liverpool lass reach the echelons of Vogue's front cover before following in the Gina-trodden footsteps of Victoria - aka perfume, modelling contracts, and a best-selling style book - although her Scouse accent is as impenetrable as ever.

On the flip side, they may argue that if they gain so much as a pound or have a bad hair/thigh or make-up free day, they are vilified in celebrity magazines. Colleen will never, ever, for example, deign to wear pink velour again for fear of losing her style icon status - not even for a must-wear pink velour charity tracksuit event.

Wags tottering in the same vertiginous stilettos include Alex Curran, wife of Steven Gerrard, Cheryl Tweedy, Girls Aloud singer and wife of Ashley Cole...and more.

The rise of the Wag coincided with last year's World Cup in Germany when their antics garnered more column inches than their respective partners' leg-work on the pitch. There were stories of endless shopping trips, bitter spats and hard partying.

But while Victoria and Colleen have shown there is money to be made from simply being the Mrs of a footballer - millions of it - not all Wags are the same. Some prefer to carve out their own careers, entirely separate from those of their husbands or boyfriends.

Victoria McManaman, wife of Steve, is a barrister and has lived a luxury life for years in cities from Madrid to Manchester. "I have to use my maiden name for work," she told one newspaper. "Sometimes when people ask me I even pretend that my husband does something else for a living. When I taught at the Law Society in Madrid, for example, I told my students I was married to a plumber."

Still, those happy to remain in the background appear to be as rare as a Wag being spotted in Clarks flats.

It's no wonder Roy Keane has spoken out about their influence. He's probably concerned that he'll never get a decent player to step foot in the Stadium of Light again, not unless they've just come off the Chelsea players' coach. No longer, it appears, are the wives happy to sit quietly or follow their husbands meekly.

They want the limelight, the fame, the celebrity. They want the best shops, the best places to be seen and be "papped" and they want to go there with their Wag mates. Sunderland, one imagines, is not even on the Wag radar, (a device which gives off an air raid-like siren if taken out of the comfort zones of London, Manchester or Liverpool.)

England manager Steve McLaren will no doubt agree with Keane's sentiments. He has already called for an end to the Wag phenomenon and wants the players' wives, girlfriends and family members to keep a much lower profile in future.

But the Wag looks here to stay. She has even entered the Collins English Dictionary, gaining her own definition in June this year. She is wearing the trousers, Versace of course, and it doesn't look likely to change.