Coleen Rooney confident of winning libel battle against Rebekah Vardy but regrets it got ‘this far’

Rebekah Vardy committed a ‘clear betrayal of trust’ by leaking stories about Coleen Rooney anonymously or via third parties, the High Court heard today.

At the start of the £1million ‘Wagatha Christie’ battle between the two women, the judge heard that Coleen launched a ‘detective process’ to get to the bottom of who was responsible for the leaks and concluded that it was Rebekah.

As lawyers for both women came face to face for the first time today, David Sherborne, representing Coleen told the court that she tried to mediate to avoid the costly court case and feels that the money could have been ‘better spent.’

Rebekah Vardy, wife of Leicester City and England striker Jamie, has launched a £1m High Court libel action after Coleen accused her in an Instagram post a year ago of leaking stories about her and others to the media.

Mr Sherborne told the court: ‘Mrs Rooney says that Mrs Vardy was responsible for the leak of the stories to the Sun but she’s equally sad that this matter should have got to court.

‘She’s been drawn into this litigation despite offering to mediate with Mrs Vardy because she recognises that in these life changing times, the time and money could be better spent.’

Rebekah’s barrister Hugh Tomlinson QC said Coleen’s posts were an ‘untrue and unjustified defamatory attack’ which was ‘published and republished to millions of people’

He said her accusation ‘leaves the reasonable reader in no doubt that the defendant is accusing the claimant of consistently and repeatedly betraying her trust over several years.’

He added: ‘In fact, she did nothing wrong. Whatever leaks there were did not come from her.’

Mr Tomlinson went through the lines of Coleen’s post, arguing how it would have been perceived.

He said: ‘This post was published and reshared to millions of people and gained wide public currency.’

Quoting from her post where she said she ‘now knows for certain’ who was leaking stories, Mr Tomlinson said the post leaves no doubt for the reasonable reader.

‘That is not the language of suspicion, that is the language of finding out the truth,’ he said.

Mr Tomlinson said while Coleen began with a suspicion, the post ended with a clear accusation after outlining her ‘detective process’.

He continued: ‘That is the process that has been characterised in the press as ‘Wagatha Christie’.

‘She is describing her detective process, it’s part of her process to find the true villain of the piece.’

Mr Tomlinson characterised the end of the post which named Rebekah’s account as ‘a series of dots waiting for a revelation’.

He added: ‘The person is Rebekah Vardy, the finger is being pointed at her, as the villain, the person, the someone, the one person.’

Mr Tomlinson said that the perception of the ordinary social media user reading the post would be clear: ‘They are going to think she (Mrs Rooney) has revealed the culprit… it was Rebekah Vardy that was leaking to The Sun, she was the one person who had access to the three stories, and she was the one person who had betrayed Mrs Rooney’s trust for many years.’

Mr Sherborne, for Coleen, said the social media post repeatedly refences the word ‘account’, which would not be read as an unequivocal accusation of guilt against Mrs Vardy by the ordinary social media user.

The barrister added a person may be ‘struck’ by the constant reference to the word account.

Mr Sherborne said: ‘That is the impression they would be left with and we say anything else would be over-elaborate.’

He later said it was ‘widely known’ that celebrities and media personalities may have their social media accounts managed by others. 

Prior to today’s hearing, MailOnline revealed Rooney is confident of winning the case but regrets that it has got ‘this far’.

Contrary to widespread speculation, neither Rebekah or Coleen or their famous footballer husbands are in court today. 

It is believed Rebekah that she will deny being ‘The Secret Wag,’ the Sun newspaper’s source of stories about Coleen and other footballers’ partners. 

A spokesman for Coleen told MailOnline: ‘Coleen’s defence is already filed and in the public domain. It sets out the facts of her case and will be the same, whatever is decided today.

‘Given those facts, Coleen remains entirely confident in her position as she has been throughout.

‘It is still a matter of regret to her that the matter has been allowed by the other party to get this far.’

In a sensational 55-page defence document, Coleen has set out in granular detail why she thought Rebekah was behind the anonymous ‘Secret Wag’ column.

She described Rebekah as having an ‘established history and habitual practice of providing private information to journalists’.

A source said: ‘Becky is set to swear publicly and on oath to the High Court that she was not the so-called Secret Wag for the newspaper.’

The Secret Wag issue is seen as central by lawyers on both sides in establishing whether Rebecca did leak stories from Coleen’s private social media accounts to The Sun, which she has consistently denied.

The ‘Wagatha Christie’ saga began a year ago when Coleen tweeted that she had secretly planted three fake stories on Instagram in the months before, but said she blocked all her followers except Rebekah from seeing them.

After stories appeared which contained references to the faked posts, Coleen famously declared the results of her investigation, announcing: ‘It’s . . . Rebekah Vardy’s account.’

The mother-of-four, who shares Kai, 10, Klay, seven, Kit, four, and Cass, two, with Derby County footballer Wayne, also 34, is determined to fight off the libel case.

But for her part, Rebekah is seeking substantial damages and says she has suffered ‘severe and extreme hostility and abuse’ in the fallout after the claims were published on Instagram.

She is expected to make a bombshell courtroom denial of Coleen‘s claims that she was ‘The Secret Wag’.

A source said yesterday: ‘Becky is set to swear publicly and on oath to the High Court that she was not the so-called Secret Wag for the newspaper.’