When did footballers’ wives become ‘WAGs’?

Wagtime

Footballers’ wives Rebekah Vardy and Coleen Rooney are locked in a libel trial dubbed ‘Wagatha Christie’. The term WAGs, as it happens, was first unleashed on the public 20 years ago this week while the England football team and their families were spending a five-day bonding session in Dubai, prior to the 23 players flying out to South Korea for the 2002 World Cup. The term WAGs, reported the Sunday Telegraph, had been used for ‘wives and girlfriends’ by staff at Jumeirah Beach Club, where they were staying and enjoying the facilities, which included two swimming pools with underwater music and belly-dancing workshops. The bonding session seems to have done the trick – while at first staff said ‘conversation was stilted’, by the end ‘the kids were playing together and the wives were comparing bikinis’.