The HandCNews.com Football Pie League, Sponsored by Moduline – Season 2010/11 winners – Ipswich Town Football Club’s Portman Pie
Season Review
We are pleased to announce that the inaugural HandCNews.com Football Pie League, Sponsored by Moduline ended with our first Champions and winners, Ipswich Town Football Club.
HandCNews.com and our Pie League sponsors Moduline would like to congratulate Ipswich Town on their achievement. We would like to especially thank the Ipswich Town fans who voted for their beloved Portman Pie as well as the away fans who voted. In many ways the away vote is the real accolade as away fans have the widest experience of football pies.
The season started with a simple comment from a Crawley Town fan in response to an article from a football pie manufacturer we had published.
The comment was simply reflecting on the fan’s match day experience when football minnows Crawley Town pitched up to Old Trafford to face the Premier League Champions Manchester United in the FA Cup.
The fan in question works in the food service industry and commented on a good pie experience during the match day at Old Trafford. He then finished off by asking the question that started the league, “who does do the best football pies”?
The original article and comment can be seen here
We then published a story asking the simple question from subscribers to our weekly newsletter and website visitors, ‘who does do the best football pies’?
We had hoped for a good response and throughout the rest of the season were astounded not only by the volume of comments/votes but also the passion and humour of many of the messages we received (one or two were a tad too passionate, so went unpublished).
The passion and humour led to us developing another dimension to the voting system, points for including a football cliché within the vote.
Once the league got going it seemed to develop a life of its own. We carefully monitor our web traffic through Google Analytics and traffic sources are a key factor of measurement. Traffic is measured each week and one week out of nowhere the BBC turned up as the third biggest referral source.
The HandCNews.com Football Pie League, Sponsored by Moduline had been picked up by BBC Radio 5 Live the sports radio website, WOW.
This was then followed by The HandCNews.com Football Pie League, Sponsored by Moduline also featuring in Blackburn Rovers FC’s website and Ipswich Town’s.
These sites really gave the pie league web traction and votes flowed in especially from fans of the clubs featuring the league and encouraging home support. Ipswich also featured The HandCNews.com Football Pie League, Sponsored by Moduline in a match day programme.
Some marketing websites started to also follow the league as well as a football pie site, other hospitality and catering sites and some local press sites.
Blackburn Rovers finished second in the league and were top of the league most of the season with great support home and away.
Reading FC came third and without any recognised club support encouraging their fans to vote, making us think they must have a very good pie offering at the Madejski Stadium.
Manchester United came fourth, with almost all of their points coming from away fans, again with no recognised club support.
Norwich City ended up fifth, no club support visible here either, come on Delia, ‘where are you’?
In all thirty one clubs received votes across all divisions and the Scottish league. There were quite a few notable exceptions and we were disappointed that no non league teams received votes.
We are visiting Portman Road on 28th June to present the inaugural league trophy to Ipswich Town at a lunchtime event organised by their hospitality team. Representatives from our league sponsors Moduline will be present as will guests from Adnams the brewers, Pie Makers Kentish Mayde, Lindley Group Catering and local press.
We will have photographers at the event and will bring a full report on the presentation.
The 2011/12 season will be upon us before we know it so we encourage all football clubs to start promoting their pie offerings.
We are also looking for more sponsors, so if your brand wants to be associated with the 2011/12 season please get in touch.
Denis Sheehan on 07596 742380 or email Denis