SHE fell for the thrill of being a lover of a superstar footballer.

Natasha Giggs, 29, had an eight-year affair with Manchester United winger Ryan Giggs, 38, when she was married to his brother Rhodri.

In an interview with The Sun, she said she was a fool to risk her marriage just for experiencing the high of sleeping with someone like Ryan Giggs.

Rhodri Giggs, 34, left her after the news of the affair broke, and now she's hoping he will take her back.

"Now I pray he will forgive me and we can be together again," she told The Sun.

The man found out about his wife's two-timing only in June when a Sunday newspaper ran an interview with her where she confessed it all.

Rhodri packed his bags and left - and Natasha spent their wedding anniversary in tears. She admitted that her decision to come clean to a paper rather than to Rhodri was "unforgivable".

She said she decided to go public about her affair after it emerged that the Manchester United player had cheated on his wife, Stacey, mother of his two children, with Big Brother beauty Imogen Thomas.

Ryan Giggs took out a gag order to stop Thomas from selling her story to the media. But last week, the High Court in London cleared the 28-year-old Thomas of trying to blackmail him.

No more enjoyment

Natasha, meanwhile, said that by the end of their eight-year affair, any enjoyment had long since disappeared.

She felt her regular sex sessions with Ryan had become "seedy" and that she was increasingly haunted by guilt over two-timing her husband.

Said Natasha: "At the beginning, it was thrilling to know that someone as famous and admired as Ryan wanted to be in bed with me.

"But by the end, the whole thing had become so seedy. It stopped being fun. The thrill had gone and there was nothing romantic about it."

She said she has learned two important things this year - the most important being that she loves her husband more than she ever realised.

"I still can't believe what a fool I was to risk what we had all for the thrill of having sex with Ryan," she said.

"Now I sleep alone in the bed I used to share with Rhodri and wish he were back in it with me."

Natasha said she is hoping that time will help heal the pain that she has caused to her husband.

"This has been the worst year of my life and I know I have only myself to blame...

"Ryan's wife has found a way to take him back. I just hope my husband can find it in his heart to do the same," she added.

Natasha first met Ryan Giggs in a Manchester nightclub in March 2003.

She started dating Rhodri Giggs two months later and finally married him last year after a five-year engagement.

But she continued to see his elder brother until their affair ended earlier this year.

She fled to Spain just before the story appeared. Her husband believed that she had just gone on a holiday with the kids.

She told The Sun: "I couldn't bear to tell Rhodri in person because it would have killed me to witness the terrible pain I'd caused him.

"I knew his world was going to be blown to pieces and I didn't want to see him cry."

She said her mother pleaded with her to tell her husband what she had done, but she refused.

Natasha returned from Spain to an empty home, and on their first wedding anniversary on June 18, she received the divorce papers from Rhodri.

She said she threw them into the bin.

Even though she knew it was hard to imagine that he would forgive her, she didn't want to give up on the marriage easily.

She added: "Now Ryan was finally out of my life, I felt as though Rhodri and I had a better chance of making it work than ever before."

Natasha and Rhodri have met but have yet to patch things up.

This article was first published in The New Paper.