Don’t laugh at Wayne Rooney – he could be the next Poet Laureate

In the great Venn diagrams of life, it is rare that we find “football” and “poetry” overlapping, but on last night’s I’m a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here, Coleen Rooney sat perfectly in that cross section.

“Is he affectionate, in words?” her co star GK Barry asks of Coleen’s footballer husband, Wayne Rooney. “He’s always wrote me poems,” she responds.

It is easy to laugh at this. Before last night, my knowledge of Wayne Rooney’s prowess with words was limited to his talent for alliteration when naming his children (Kai, Klay, Kit and Cass).

So, yes – it is comedic to think of a man famed for his penalty box prowess, his receding hairline and his allegedly nefarious dealings with sex workers sitting in a full kit in an away changing room, scribbling on hotel stationery something like: “Roses are red / Football pitches are green / I put the goal in the net / and my love in you, Coleen.”

The humour, however, falls away when we remember other Manchester United footballers who have written poetry. Ryan Giggs famously had a go at rhyming couplets, which surfaced in his defence when he was accused of headbutting his then-girlfriend and elbowing her sister; penning lines like, “you are my love, my friend, my soul/…you believe in me. Which makes me feel as hard as a totem pole”. Giggs always denied the allegations and was ultimately cleared of all charges.

Totem poles aside, why are we so ready to laugh at the notion of footballers putting pen to paper to write something romantic in the first place? Or putting pen to paper – at all?

It seems to me that we put men into two categories: the body and the brain. We think of “masculine men” as those who use their body for a living, or as a reflection of their success. Builders, carpenters and athletes have been grouped together with jacked CEOs and influencers as “alpha males” whose worth, determination and moral fortitude is all symbolized by having a six pack.

On the other hand, there are the “beta males”, the “feminine men” – writers, accountants, office workers and poets like me. If we have any worth at all in a capitalist society, it is one supposedly based on our intellect. All of this is an extension of a binary masculine/feminine divide which classes men as material and reasonable – and women as immaterial and illogical.

As GK Barry said last night: “Never did I ever think Wayne Rooney had it in him to write a love poem. I never saw him as that kind of man.”

To which I must immediately ask: what kind of man? The kind of man who is capable of both an overhead kick which is still considered one of the best goals in Premier League History – and a poem articulating his love for his wife? That couldn’t possibly be the same man? Why not?

When it is revealed that he writes poetry, we react with shock (or snark) because our categorisation of that person – and perhaps our categorisation of all people – has been rocked at its foundations: my god, someone who might be body and brain!

Here’s what I think, as a 31-year-old poet who is currently sat in a hotel room in Sheffield on a book tour, missing my wife who is pregnant with our first child: Wayne Rooney’s poetry is none of our business. What is actually interesting here is the public/private divide that is at play:

As Coleen says: “We were in the public eye… and since the first mistake he’s made that’s been in the public, people have not forgiven him.”

She refers, we assume, to it being reported in 2010 that Wayne Rooney cheated on her with two sex workers while she was pregnant with their first child. Which I think we can all agree is an immoral thing.

However, firstly, to judge their relationship on that is to feed into this idea that Wayne Roonye’s only worth is the acts he can perform with his body – whether they be sporting or sexual. And secondly, the public (and writers like myself) pontificating on whether the Rooneys should still be married – or even questioning what his poems entail – is us demanding a private and emotional truth we have no right to.

Rooney’s poems are private – and as Coleen Rooney says: “We’re not a lovey dovey couple in public… and when someone has done something just for you… the words mean something.”

Words do mean something: it’s why we have poetry and football commentary in the first place. And however terrible those stanzas may be, it doesn’t really matter as long as the person we love likes them. Does it?