eating out on the terraces

'An army marches on it's stomach' or so the saying goes, and a pretty reasonable statement it seems at that. The traditional day for the football army to set out on its Holy Crusade is of course Saturday, although this time-honoured custom is increasingly being challenged by Colonel Blimp and his Satellite Sunday' Brigade (nothing that a good court martial and firing squad couldn't resolve).

The body of the football fan is a finely tuned, highly calibrated instrument, a precision machine which draws on huge amounts of energy. This energy fuels the ongoing emotional and physical stresses the football disciple endures simply by blindly following their team over land and sea (and water).

There has been much written about the importance of a carefully balanced diet for the professional footballer in order to ensure that peak fitness is reached to help meet the increasingly physical demands of the game. The diet of the football fan is equally crucial however, since working yourself up into a lunatic state twice a week is a demanding and big business which requires fully charged batteries if the correct levels of lunacy are to he reached and consistently maintained.

In support of every army is the field kitchen, behind every football army at the top of the terrace is the command bunker known as the snack bar, a noble institution to feed the front line fan in his battle against such ailments as frostbite, sleeping sickness and terrace foot. Lord Justice Taylor spoke of an 'all-pervading stench of onions' on matchday and whilst much of this originated from outside burger vans there's no doubt that the aromatic qualities of terrace snackbars could put ICI to shame. Pungent onion smells usually mean the football army is close at hand and about to be fed some highly dodgy rations.

The Holte End can currently hold some 19,210 claret and blue souls and over the years there has been a highly challenging series of snacks on sale to test the digestion of even the most ardent. Holte snack bars have been better than most of their counterparts at other grounds although that's hardly a recommendation. Standards have improved in recent years, but in truth fans all over the country would hardly be surprised if terrace refreshment bars bore the message 'Abandon hope all ye who eat here'.

Listed below are just some of the great Holte End snacks that over the years gave great bodily comfort and spiritual relief to those who didn't buy them and an ongoing wariness and addiction to Rennies for those who did.

MEAT AND POTATO PIE. Basically, these pies were the works; thick, crusty pastry, loads of potato and gravy with a touch of meat. The effect they had on the bowels led to them being known as 'Ollys' after the Spitting Image Oliver Reed sketch where it was found necessary to declare an exclusion zone round Oliver in order to maintain public safety.

The consumers of the pies could easily be identified by the fact that come the second half few people would dare stand within a twenty yard radius of them other than those unfortunate individuals with a severely impaired sense of smell.

A serious consideration in the Taylor report was how quickly grounds could be evacuated as a consequence of a multiple 'Olly'. There are many who feel that all-seater stadia will merely increase the difficulty in evacuating an affected area in such times of crisis. A batch of rogue pie gravy was thought to be a contributory factor in the sparse attendance of 8,456 against Southampton in 1986.

HALF TIME BOVRIL: The emergence of skinheads in the late sixties led to an experiment of adding tranquillisers to the half-time Bovril. A planning mix-up led to the playing staff also being given tranquillisers and the club were relegated in 1970. The Bovril, however, was perfect for polishing up cherry red Doc Martens during time of rather grim football.

KLIXO GUM: The appearance of this chewing gum was capsule-like and resembled a white liquorice comfort packed in a sealed foil container. Scoring a half-time tab became a half-time art involving enormous queues. Demand totally outstripped supply and dealing networks were set up with terrace prices rocketing. Klix reduced the traditional inhibitions to dance about and was particularly popular during the aggregate 13-0 victory rave over Small Heath during 1988 when people almost danced themselves to a standstill. Klix made people happy, especially any of the dental profession who worked on piece rate.

MARS BARS: This much loved favourite, allegedly adored by Mick Jagger and Marianne Faithful in the swinging sixties has helped football fans to work, rest and play up for many years. A competition was held by the manufacturers which involved letters of the alphabet being printed on the inside of the wrappers, the idea being to make up key words and win a prize. Many Holte enders collected the letters and passed half-time by creating sure-fire winning phrases like 'We hate Nottingham Forest'. Sheer genius.

CHEESE COBS: Something of a robust feast, there was little chance of finishing one off unless the match went into extra time. The recipe used for making these cobs was the same as that used by Francis Drake for his cannonballs which were used to scupper the Spanish Armada in 1588. 405 years later the Deportivo La Coruna players were said to be petrified that the Holte End were to unleash a broadside of the said cheese cobs. The cheese used was produced as an offshoot of NASA space technology, which just shows the multinational influences of terrace culture.

CRISPS: A popular mainstay of any snack bar range, crisps have to have either a copious coating of the strongest Siberian salt known to man, or else never even encounter a sniff of anything resembling sodium chloride.

'The Pickled Egg Chernobyl' range introduced in 1985 was initially a big favourite, but these were subsequently withdrawn after several reported cases of 'up on the roof melted mouth' syndrome. The jagged edges on the crisps were invaluable during the wicked hand to hand combat situations which frequently arose during the queuing for Klix 0 Gum.

THE CUP OF TEA: The famous miracle of the 'Holy Teabag of Turin' is still fresh in the memory of Holte Enders after the Juventus European Cup-tie of 1983. In the same manner as the Feeding of the 5,000, two tea bags and five plastic cups were used over and over again to refresh the half-time needs of a packed Holte End. Never in the field of human tea-drinking have so few bags undergone so much straining on behalf of so many.

This historic event is still commemorated every March 2nd, when thousands weep openly on the streets of Aston. Once the weeping is out of the way they normally go off for a cup of coffee.

The above are just a few of the long-since departed titbits that enlightened our stay on the Holte End, snacks that will bum forever in our hearts.

Pass the Rennies please.

Jon Follows.