"Rooney was shit the other night." "Yes, yes he flipping was."

Cape Town – South Africa. Team morale in the England dressing room reached it’s lowest ebb yesterday after an unsightly fracas at Fabio Capello’s 64th birthday party. England’s pampered superstars fell out when a simple game of pass the parcel highlighted the growing divisions in the camp and an inability to work cohesively.

Stuart Pearce told Sky News that tensions peaked when a nonchalant sideways pass from Wayne Rooney resulted in Glen Johnson fumbling the parcel before Emile Heskey “ploughed into him with an ill judged two footed tackle.”

“The boys had struggled for a while and were beginning to get frustrated. We had a brief break after 45 minutes into the game to see where we all thought things were going wrong. It was clear that we need to bring on some new players and change the formation of the chairs, but Capello declared that it was ‘his party’ and pretended he couldn’t speak English. Twenty minutes after the restart I had to intervene and strip the first layer off, without proper supervision it could have gone on for hours. Maybe weeks. And the paper cuts were mounting up on Ledley’s hands.”

The music finally stopped while Rooney had possession of the parcel, with only the last layer of wrapping paper to come off. To every attendee’s suprise he dropped the parcel to the ground, declaring that he “was proper knackered like.” Which was a huge shock given how well he’d performed at previous bashes, notably Gary Neville’s cowboy themed birthday.

An FA spokesman dismissed the rumours in a statement claiming that the players were merely involved in hi-jinx and were currently bonding over a game of ‘pin the tail on the Robert Green.’

"I've never felt so deflated."