No Beef Pies At The Lawn

The revelation that all red meat products are off-limits both to players and supporters at Forest Green Rovers has attracted a lot of publicity this week for the Conference club on the top of the hill.

Owner, and some say saviour, of the club is Dale Vince, a millionaire who has made his money from Ecotricity, the green energy company. (That's the company that owns the business park with the tall wind-turbine near Reading which is on the side of the M4. Vince's company has received over £600,000 in subsidies from the government for just this one turbine since 2005.)

It's at his insistance that neither the players nor supporters can eat any red meat product whilst at the club. And Bovril is banned as well.

He's even told the manager of the Green Man, the pub at the ground, to take their cottage pies off the menu. And the club has stopped serving their Sunday carvery meals. Instead there will be Free range poultry and fish from sustainable stocks on its menu, as well as vegetarian food.

In bygone days when Hereford United used to play in the Conference, some supporters said that the pies at The Lawn was some of the best in the country.

Not every Forest Green fan backs the stance of the chairman.

"Are we allowed to wear leather shoes, leather coats or even worse sheepskin coats when attending matches in future?" wrote Seat C32 on the fans forum.

Another comment suggested that if the chairman wanted everyone to eat healthy fare why was the club selling crisps? (Do they include beef and onion flavour? - ed).

The approach at Forest Green is so different to that at Hereford United, where one of the first decisions taken by those now in charge was to send Lindley's Catering packing with all their 'mass produced in a factory handling nuts' type pies and introduce the best of Herefordshire beef pies from local caterers Ascaris.

The aim at Edgar Street is to support local business and local products where possible in the hope that local business will support the club.

"No plans to go the same way," vice-chairman Tim Russon told BN when asked about the Forest Green ban.

"Our catering has just scored a ten out of ten in the family excellence award which seems to suggest fans are enjoying the produce served up by Ascaris. I think our aim is to try to please and satisfy the tastes and appetites of the supporters and hopefully that's what we're doing at the moment.

"We serve a full range of refreshments including beef pies, which are proving very popular, and cheese and potato pies, which people love as well, so it seems a varied menu is working well and is hitting the spot for the Bulls fans."

Yesterday with no red meat in their diet Forest Green were hammered 4-0 at Southport whereas the Bulls ran out 3-0 winners at Cheltenham.

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