I remember the first time I heard the term ‘wag’ used. I had no idea what it meant and thought it might have been some new super drug. You know, seeing as how all the sports stars seemed to have one.

It wasn’t until I paid a bit more attention that I learnt it referred to wives and girlfriends, typically of male sports stars.

Thus began my hatred of what is undoubtedly one the most ugliest abbreviations ever used.

There’s no graceful way to say wag in conversation. Try it. Somebody come up with an audible aesthetically pleasing use of the word wag in a conversation.

‘Hi, these are the wags, they’re here to shop.’

‘man I wish I was a wag it seems like such an easy life.’

‘who do you think is the hottest wag of all?’

Let’s face it if speech was a glass of water, using the term wag would be like adding an instant sachet mix of bogan.

Not surprisingly wag fits in quite well to the bogan lexicon.

‘Yeah nah, so I’m a wag and eye think youse are making fun of mey.’

See, it rolls off the tongue like lyrical bliss.

Like a lot of things, it seems we’ve got the English to blame for the (over)use of the word today. Back in 2006 during the football soccer world cup the English wives and girlfriends caused a bit of a media storm with their social lives and shopping and the phrase was coined to refer to them.

Was England’s performance really that bad during the world cup that we had to focus on wags?

Since then the phrase has enjoyed widespread media coverage over there and somewhat annoyingly, increasing coverage over here too.

Despite the heavy pushing of the wag phrase by the media over here in Australia I’ve yet to hear anyone actually use the phrase when talking.

Most recently the term wag was trotted out for the Brownlow medal. Honestly with all the fuss created over the AFL wags, you’d be forgiven for thinking the Brownlow was a fashion awards night.

It’s not just the football though, whenever a male team sport gets some media airplay inevitably a discussion on wags follows.

Which wag is catty with who, what shoes did the wags buy today, what are their views on global politics?

More and more the sports their husbands and boyfriends play take a backseat to the brief virtual reality show that is a wag’s life.

And does anyone care?

Half the time I’ve never even heard of the wags nor do I recognise them by face. Sure there are the odd high profile ones but by and large they are nobodies. In a desperate bid to ‘create’ news and emulate our English counterparts the Australian media continually try to make big news out of Australia’s closet ‘celebrities’.

Curious as to just how stupid the lengths are that we’ll go to keep wags in the news when there’s a sporting event on?

Back in May Australian cricket wags were summoned for a ‘team camp‘ to attempt to pre-emptively resolve any cattiness between them. Apparently this cattiness is what cost Australia the Ashes in 2005.

No really?

“It was apparent, when the guys returned to the hotel from Lord’s, that some personality clashes had disrupted relations between wives and players,” Gilchrist wrote.

“A guy would go out to dinner with his partner and hear bad things about someone else’s partner.

“You could be sure that the same was happening somewhere else, in reverse.

“So it ended up that some of the guys were suffering from their divided loyalties.”


Divided loyalties? Are we talking about barn animals or professional sportsmen here? Pussy whipped indeed.

Shamefully this story made national headlines when it went live.

News.com.au even have a dedicated gallery set up to showcase the wags of Australia. Not that I’m a barometer of recognizability but Jesus Christ I’ve never even heard of half of these people!

If the lives of our sports stars wives and girlfriends is that much more interesting then the sport being played itself something is desperately wrong with the sport. Women who don’t do anything all day should overshadow the entire reason they’re ‘famous’ to begin with in the first place.

Coupled with just how stupid it sound to use, can we at some point put this stupid acronym to bed already?

I mean what’s wrong with simply using partners? Or air heads, non-achievers or ‘people who shouldn’t matter’. There’s just so many more attractive options out there instead of WAG.

Come on media, lift your game.

1. Hey NRMA, stop giving idiots a voice!