Food and football have always been entwined, like a well-weighted through ball from one player to the next, or a perfectly poured pint and its drinker. The connection isn’t new, but lately, it’s been given a social media sheen. With the rise of accounts like Footy Scran and my own, Only Scrans, a whole digital culture has emerged dedicated to the sacred art of eating while watching blokes in shorts smash a ball about.
But long before algorithms decided what we should salivate over, food was already part of the ritual. My first match, aged seven, wasn’t just a baptism of floodlights and the roar of the crowd. It was the smell of fried onions, thick in the cold air, curling from the burger stalls like the steam off a cup of Bovril.
Lou Macari’s fish and chip shop has sat watching over Old Trafford at the top of Sir Matt Busby Way like a sentinel of sodium for half a century. It has seen the rise and fall of a dynasty from 400 yards away. Dishing out chips through trebles and trophy droughts with the same stoic consistency. Decades later, the chips still taste exactly as they should. Like matchday, like memories, like home.
The Noted Eel & Pie House in Leytonstone
Scran Away/Only Scrans
It’s the kind of place that outlives players, managers, and certainly shirt sponsors. It is so iconic, in fact, Lou Marcari’s recently ended up in a commercial for United’s latest clothing range. Not because it needs the exposure, but because the club itself knows this chippy has more authenticity in its grease-stained tiles than any football brand could ever manufacture.
But this isn’t just about United. Every club in the country has its own Lou Macari’s. A shrine to the rituals of pre-match sustenance, where the queue outside is as much a part of the game as the turnstiles and the first pint. That’s why I created Scran Away. To document these places, to give them the spotlight they deserve, because without football, they fade. And without them, football loses something too.
My first match wasn’t just a baptism of floodlights and the roar of the crowd. It was the smell of fried onions curling from the burger stalls like the steam off a cup of Bovril
I never thought I’d find myself in the stands for Port Vale vs Newport County. And I certainly didn’t think, with a quiet pang of shame, that the football on show would be a cut above the sludge I willingly endure at Old Trafford. But that’s the thing about this game, it surprises you.
Filming this series has taken me to stadiums I’d never have visited, to places I’d only ever known from my 3pm Saturday Both Teams To Score accumulators. Honestly, it’s changed the way I see football. Strip away the sanitised gloss of the Premier League, the overpriced pints and the club shop tat. Then you’re left with something raw, something real. Fans who don’t just turn up and go through the motions, but who stitch their lives around their club. People who measure time in seasons, who treat their pre-match pint and pie like sacraments.
At a time when so many are struggling financially, when it would be easier to stay home, the fact that people still come to watch, to eat, to sing, to be together. That says everything about what football really is. It’s not just a game, it’s a community. And wherever I’ve been, whatever the result, that’s what I’ve felt in every ground, over every half-time drink, in every conversation with blokes who have been coming since the floodlights were installed.
From the first episode… Jono Yates’ heads to watch Leyton Orient
In the first episode, I heard from the great grandson of Noted Eel & Pie House’s founder (481a High Rd Leytonstone, E11 4JU, notedeelandpiehouse.co.uk), went to Deeney’s (360 High Road, E10 6QE, deeneys.com) to sample the famous Macbeth toastie, shared a pint with the fans at The Leytonstone Tavern (119 Harrow Road, E11 3PX, leytonstonetavern.com) and taste-tested the unmatched beef links, corn ribs and melt-in-the-mouth brisket at the Burnt Smokehouse (161a Midland Road, E10 6JT, @burnt.smokehouse).