Meaning of "handbags" in the context of a fight

Apparently a tussle between two English footballers was described by an official spokesperson as

'I was there. There was no punches thrown. There was a lot of noise. Samir was talking in French, Manu wasn’t. They didn’t touch. It was handbags. There were words and that happens after most games,' he said.

Is this a BrE usage?

Solution 1:

From Wiktionary:

In British slang a fight where the protagonists are unable or unwilling to seriously hurt each other is commonly refered to as a handbag fight, in reference to the way girls fight by hitting each other with their handbags.

Update: I found this reference by searching for "handbags at dawn", but it turns out I could also have found it by searching for "handbags fight", so actually this is a question that could be answered by a simple search.

Solution 2:

It's a contraction of 'handbags at dawn'. This phrase is itself a variation of 'pistols at dawn' which was a typical way of fighting a duel. The phrase 'handbags at dawn' evokes a mental image of old ladies using their handbags as crude bludgeons and implies the participants weren't really serious about inflicting harm on each other.