A football writer’s priorities - Food for thought

Many people might see football reporting as quite a glamorous pastime, but believe me it can be tough – sometimes you just never know where the next meal is coming from.

Over the years I have got into the habit of filling my face at strategic places both inside and outside of the local grounds.

Some clubs are so strapped for cash that you wouldn’t even expect them to lay on a spread for Her Majesty’s press corps. At Hereford for example, the boys in the press box provide their own biscuits and coffee, although I always make time to visit the great little burger van in the public car park adjacent to the Edgar Street ground.

Cheltenham is in the same position. The club does lay on the Rich Tea or Digestives, but if you leave the box at half-time before the plate has been passed around – you stand a good chance of losing out. Very often it’s either biscuits or coffee at Whaddon Road – never both!

However, the ladies who run the food outlet in the ground do a sterling job and are even prepared to make you a cuppa before they’ve officially opened. It reminds me of one of the canteens you find in hospitals that are run by cheery volunteers who are aware that you might be suffering a tragedy of some sort. Come to think of it!

The Bristol clubs are like chalk and cheese.

At Rovers a pot of coffee is passed along the row at half time and when you’ve suffered 45 minutes of chilling winds whipping over Bristol and across the stand at the Memorial Ground, it’s a godsend. After the game you make for the press conference held next to the gym in the bowels of the stadium to help yourself to a hot drink from the coffee machine AND a complimentary Kit-Kat.

City has the advantage of being the more affluent club at the moment and so on arrival you’re greeted with a tea or coffee and a selection of hot pies and pasties and a charming gentleman who encourages you to “try another”.

At Oxford they kindly offer to drinks before the game and at the break you’ll get another – and a biscuit if you’re quick enough – but the cheeseburgers offered outside the ground are worth arriving 30 minutes early for.

Wycombe have a lovely little press room where tea, coffee and biscuits are served while you can watch the midday kick-off live on Sky. Classy, but not quite enough to feed a growing lad, and so a pre-match burger is always needed from the outlet in the ground.

At Northampton a KFC is positioned just opposite the stadium. Enough said.

Like Bristol City, Reading have a few more quid in their pockets and so push the boat out a little by providing the usual drinks alongside pre-packaged supermarket sandwiches and a choice of hot savoury pastries.

But of my regular haunts I have to doff my cap to the lady in the Swindon press room who always ensures your tea cup is full and provides a selection of homemade sarnies to set you up for the afternoon ahead.

The best I’ve ever had? No contest. On my only trip to Nottingham Forest I arrived at the City Ground about three hours early over-compensating for the fact that I’d never been there before.

I walked into the press room and nearly turned to go back out as I thought I’d stumbled into the directors’ suite by mistake. There in front of me lay a feast of homemade sandwiches filled to the brim with beef, smoked salmon, prawns. In fact you name it, they had it.

But it didn’t stop there. Three hot cabinets held every pie or pasty you could imagine.

“Help yourself.” Said the press officer and I didn’t need asking twice.

Tucking in, I ate like a Chilean miner who’d been on NASA rations for a couple of months. Just before kick-off I waddled up to the press box having hardly made a dent in the spread, but vowing to take up the challenge again at half-time.

And I duly did.

Cramming the remnants of a chicken balti pie into my mouth I staggered back to the press box after the break just as the crowd chanted: “Who ate all the pies?”.

I think it was aimed at the referee, but I took a bow anyway!