The Premiership soccer star who fought a legal battle to prevent a Sunday newspaper exposing his adultery can today be named as Blackburn Rovers player Garry Flitcroft.

The 29-year-old footballer's identity was revealed after a legal injunction ended at midnight last night.

The married father-of-two fought in the courts for almost a year at an estimated cost of £200,000 in an attempt to preserve his anonymity and prevent his wife and children learning of his affairs.

In last ditch court hearings this week, it emerged that he had informed his wife of his involvement in the controversy but may not have revealed the full story.

The Bolton-born midfielder married his childhood sweetheart, Karen Horrock, in 1997.

The legal battle started on April 27 last year, and seven months later, the Sunday People published a front page story stating it had been gagged by a judge.

The newspaper said: "We wanted to publish the shameful stories revealing the millionaire's lies and deceit but in an unprecedented ruling, Mr Justice Jack ordered we must not name him."

To comply with the court order, the Sunday newspaper called the two women in question Miss C and Miss D, so that Flitcroft would not be identified. Miss C claimed the Premiership star seduced her with lies about love and phoney promises of marriage.

The nursery nurse told the Sunday People that he proposed to her, hid the fact that he was married, offered to buy her a home, bombarded her with more than 400 mobile phone calls and only revealed he was married through a mobile phone text message.

"That man lied to me from the word go," she said. "I thought we had a real bond, but all be was interested in was getting me into bed."

Miss D, a lap dancer and former air stewardess, began a year-long affair with the footballer in 1999 after they met while she was working in a topless bar.

She claims he lied to her that he was single before revealing he was married in a text message. He then pleaded for her to wait for him while he split up with his wife.

"He told me he was married but getting a divorce," Miss D told the Sunday People.

But a few weeks later Miss D realised the footballer was not going to leave his wife. "I was completely taken in and strung along and I feel such a fool," she said. "His wife deserved to know the truth about her cheating husband and so do the fans who idolise him."

Earlier this week, Flitcroft made a last bid to prevent publication of his identity.

His lawyers asked Lord Woolf, The Lord Chief Justice, not to remove the cloak of anonymity until he had time to ask the House of Lords to consider whether the confidentiality laws applied to affairs outside marriage.

But Lord Wool ruled that the footballer had now run out of time and the story would inevitably emerge.