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CanaryNath

Why is the snakepit so called?

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It''s because ''Barclay End/City Stand Corner Infill'' wouldn''t fit on the season tickets so they had a competition to get a shorter name but when they put the new name in the machine that makes the plastic cards it auto corrected ''sad gits''.

 

 

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Back in the days when the Barclay was fun and full of lads there was a big fall out among all the ''boys'' (some of them would say hooligans, but I''d say that is an unfair label for anybody who gets a bit drunk and has some banter).
So basically there was a big fall out and probably some punches thrown in the Barclay and as a result a load of them moved to the corner a couple of years after it opened. 
They labelled it the snakepit themselves (because well, it sounds hard) and the name has stuck ever since. The original occupants are now heading towards their fifties or are already in their fifties and are largely made up of a bunch of the old top lads from the eighties and early nineties who now have big beer guts, failing eyesight and sit down more than they stand. Those lot are generally alright. 
Over the years a new generation of lads who thought they were hard and joining a firm which doesn''t exist any more have since began to inhabit it, those lads are generally morons. The snakepit was great in the late nineties and early 00''s....... full of sad cases now, gone from housing the casuals to pretty much housing the EDL. 
But basically it was a Barclay split due to a fall out of some description, don''t know much about that though - been told that a few times over the years.
The best thing about the snakepit though is that it is the only part of the ground which will revive an old song occasionally (wings of a sparrow etc), because all of our songs were mostly created away from home and those lot have been around for decades. I''d love to see the Snakepit revive itself a little to help create some atmosphere but half of them can''t manage to remember the lyrics to anything other than "whhhhooo arreee yaaaaa?" which is frankly one of the most embarrassing and uninventive chants in the game. 

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Close, but not quite what I usderstood happened. Back in the days of the "Chase out" campaign there was a boycott of games by a cohort of the Barclay to hit "Fat Bob" where it would hurt him, in his pocket. So they would go away but miss the home games. When he went with the big uplift in season tickets they found they couldn''t return to their old haunts behind the goal and moved to the closest part of the ground they could sit enmass. Since they were at the more vociferous end of the fan base the atmosphere in the ground moved with them and attracted those that follow on.

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[quote user="BigFish"]

Close, but not quite what I usderstood happened. Back in the days of the "Chase out" campaign there was a boycott of games by a cohort of the Barclay to hit "Fat Bob" where it would hurt him, in his pocket. So they would go away but miss the home games. When he went with the big uplift in season tickets they found they couldn''t return to their old haunts behind the goal and moved to the closest part of the ground they could sit enmass. Since they were at the more vociferous end of the fan base the atmosphere in the ground moved with them and attracted those that follow on.

[/quote]Interesting stuff[Y]

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[quote user="TCCANARY"]

It''s because ''Barclay End/City Stand Corner Infill'' wouldn''t fit on the season tickets so they had a competition to get a shorter name but when they put the new name in the machine that makes the plastic cards it auto corrected ''sad gits''.

 

 

[/quote]

Pathetic idiot

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[quote user="BigFish"]

Close, but not quite what I usderstood happened. Back in the days of the "Chase out" campaign there was a boycott of games by a cohort of the Barclay to hit "Fat Bob" where it would hurt him, in his pocket. So they would go away but miss the home games. When he went with the big uplift in season tickets they found they couldn''t return to their old haunts behind the goal and moved to the closest part of the ground they could sit enmass. Since they were at the more vociferous end of the fan base the atmosphere in the ground moved with them and attracted those that follow on.

[/quote]

Yeah that''s my take on it.

 

As for the snake pit name, it looks a bit like a snake pit, sort of.  I always assumed that was the reason.

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[quote user="BigFish"]

Close, but not quite what I usderstood happened. Back in the days of the "Chase out" campaign there was a boycott of games by a cohort of the Barclay to hit "Fat Bob" where it would hurt him, in his pocket. So they would go away but miss the home games. When he went with the big uplift in season tickets they found they couldn''t return to their old haunts behind the goal and moved to the closest part of the ground they could sit enmass. Since they were at the more vociferous end of the fan base the atmosphere in the ground moved with them and attracted those that follow on.

[/quote]
Sounds feasible, perhaps the ''divisions'' or ''split'' that I''m talking about is as simple as those who stayed in the Barclay and those who didn''t then.
But yeah, knew that the Snakepit was originally populated by the away crowd. Can remember that Chase boycott, was very young but can remember there being 12000 at one game and I think that was exaggerated (can remember chase letting a thousand or so kids in for free to get the gates up). 

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"The snakepit was great in the late nineties and early 00''s....... full of sad cases now, gone from housing the casuals to pretty much housing the EDL. "

Got any proof that the snakepit "houses the EDL"?

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[quote user="Bws Cat "]"The snakepit was great in the late nineties and early 00''s....... full of sad cases now, gone from housing the casuals to pretty much housing the EDL. "

Got any proof that the snakepit "houses the EDL"?[/quote]
As in..... could I provide names of active EDL members/activists who sit in the Snakepit? Yes.
Will I provide the names of potentially dangerous people on a public forum for your personal gratification and at the expense of my safety? No.

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If you look at it, it looks like a snake''s head.

I''m sure NCFC printed this somewhere in an article or programme or something.

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The New Boy (Le Juge)Bws CatThe snakepit was great in the late nineties and early 00''s....... full of sad cases now, gone from housing the casuals to pretty much housing the EDL. "

Got any proof that the snakepit "houses the EDL"?
As in..... could I provide names of active EDL members/activists who sit in the Snakepit? Yes.
Will I provide the names of potentially dangerous people on a public forum for your personal gratification and at the expense of my safety? No.
But no1 knows your name? And people are hardly going to go to the effort of tracking your IP.

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Sat in the Snakepit ever since it opened, and as far as i''m aware the name was coined after we spent almost an entire game hissing at Andy Impey.Can''t remember for the life of me why exactly we were hissing at him, but nonetheless we did.The first time i heard the name was the following home game. It''s stuck ever since.

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[quote user="Ches right hand man "]The New Boy (Le Juge)Bws CatThe snakepit was great in the late nineties and early 00''s....... full of sad cases now, gone from housing the casuals to pretty much housing the EDL. "

Got any proof that the snakepit "houses the EDL"?
As in..... could I provide names of active EDL members/activists who sit in the Snakepit? Yes.
Will I provide the names of potentially dangerous people on a public forum for your personal gratification and at the expense of my safety? No.
But no1 knows your name? And people are hardly going to go to the effort of tracking your IP. [/quote]
That may be an accurate point, but the English Defence League are not an illegal group and people have the right to join/support it if they so wish. I see no reason whatsoever to ''name and shame'' them, however far removed they are from my own ideals. They are welcome to what is left of their freedom of speech, because I''d like to keep what is left of mine. Perhaps as a communist you feel differently?
 Besides, some of them elect to go public without people needing to ''out'' them:

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[quote user="Dicky"][quote user="TCCANARY"]

It''s because ''Barclay End/City Stand Corner Infill'' wouldn''t fit on the season tickets so they had a competition to get a shorter name but when they put the new name in the machine that makes the plastic cards it auto corrected ''sad gits''.

 

 

[/quote]

Pathetic idiot[/quote]Based on his/hers other posts I don''t think this is serious.I thought it was meant to be a derogatory term that someone in the City stand used in a letter to the EDP, they were complaining about the behaviour of the fans in that area.

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I always believed that ''Fat Bob'' coined the term calling them a nest of snakes after some particularly vocal chanting against him?

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[quote user="norfolkbroadslim"]Seriously?[:^)][/quote]

Seems there are quite a few theories.

Seeing as you were quite dismissive of my question, what is your theory?

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Wow.

Le Judge is sounding more and more like Sumdger by the day including making up stuff!

Le Judge, where do you sit at the ground? It must be the N&P as there is no way you can be seated near the Snake Pit.

I have stated elsewhere that I know quite a few people that sit in the Snake Pit - none of them are EDL, none of them are ex ''firm'' of which ours was pretty tiny anyway.

For what it''s worth there used to be an almost predictable migration of male supporters around the ground.

You start off as a kid in one of the more family orientated areas of the ground. When I was a lad that was the N&P and some parts of the South Stand.

As a sort of coming of age you would experiment with a couple of games in the Barclay and love the banter and buzz and remain there.

You can then see that some migrate up the Barclay and then back to the family areas when they bring their own sprogs. Some then go back to the upper Barclay, others the City Stand, some just remain in the N&P.

The biggest change I have noted is that when I was a lad the Old South Stand was called that for two reasons. The stand and it''s fans were old. Cranky, creaky old stand!

In my time as a Norwich fan - 25+ years, I have never seen any ''firm'' activities or crowd violence from our fans. Admittedly I may have missed occasions where it did happen.

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I am pretty certain that the name was coined after some do-gooder type guy wrote to the Evening News  letters section complaining about the intimidation that opposition players were receiving from that section of the ground , not long after it started to become home to some of the more vocal/passionate section of supporters that migrated from the Barclay in the early/mid nineties.He likened the section of the stand to a ''snakepit'' and the name caught on from that.In fact I remember reading the letter myself , as it was soon after I started sitting there .As for all the bell-ends coming on here claiming that is full of EDL,criminals etc etc etc, I think if any of ''em tried standing outside the turnstile,before the start of a game or at the end,they will find people of all ages/types both male and female going in or leaving,just like anywhere else in the ground.Still if they like to feel they are somehow some sort of superior being because they sit in a different section of the ground then they can carry on deluding themselves...

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seats = Yellow. Snake pit is sand = yellow. I thought that was it?

I also understood the older fraternity of the SP were the older Barclay boys who used to stand on that side of the goal, and not the younger loutish lot who stood next to away fans spending most of the game looking/chanting/gesturing them as opposed to watching the game/joking/singing for their team. After the redevelopment, they (the original SP lot) put the word around to like minded souls to move to the "nice lil corner" so they could all be together. Arrr.

In the late 70''s I was a young kid standing on a courage crate with my Dad next to me, its certainly seemed a little more bohemian in that Barclay corner...it certainly smelled a tad funky too time if you catch my drift?

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[quote user="spencer 1970"]seats = Yellow. Snake pit is sand = yellow. I thought that was it?

I also understood the older fraternity of the SP were the older Barclay boys who used to stand on that side of the goal, and not the younger loutish lot who stood next to away fans spending most of the game looking/chanting/gesturing them as opposed to watching the game/joking/singing for their team. After the redevelopment, they (the original SP lot) put the word around to like minded souls to move to the "nice lil corner" so they could all be together. Arrr.

In the late 70''s I was a young kid standing on a courage crate with my Dad next to me, its certainly seemed a little more bohemian in that Barclay corner...it certainly smelled a tad funky too time if you catch my drift?[/quote]Aren''t you thinking of a ''sandpit''?[;)]

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