Top Ten

Oddest Things Thrown on a Football Pitch

10 MARS BARS

Returning to Newcastle after being sold to Spurs, Gazza was the target for flying Mars bars amid chants of ‘you fat bastard’. Unfazed, the tubby picked one up and took a bite.

9 CELERY

Surprisingly low-key for the club who invented the Chelsea Smile, Stamford Bridge has regularly seen bunches of veg thrown on the pitch. Apparently stems from an inexplicable song about 'tickling' a lady's bottom with 'a lump of celery'. Nice.

8 TENNIS BALLS

In 2000, Hull City owner David Lloyd has threatened to shut down the club and called the people of the city ‘crap’. In protest, fans turned up to Boothferry Park and spend the match angrily lobbing tennis balls on the pitch. 

7 CAR DOOR

Not trusting his missile-throwing instincts, a nutjob interrupted the 2002 World Cup warm-up watch between Chile and New Zealand by carrying on the object himself – a car door. The announcer changed his end of match plea from ‘do not invade the pitch’ to ‘do not bring car parts on to the pitch'.

6 PIG'S HEAD

Taking a corner at former club Barcelona’s New Camp stadium, Real Madrid’s Figo was pelted with objects, including a Jack Daniels bottle and a pig’s head. Club director José María Minguella said after, ‘We don't even eat cochinillo [pig] in Barcelona’, trying to absolve his fans of guilt.

5 HAND GRENADE

During a game away to Brentford in 1965, a Millwall nutter chucked a used hand grenade in the direction of Chic Brodie. The player, Danny Baker recalls: ‘simply waved one arm, then more urgently two, towards his nearest official’. Then everyone else legged it off the pitch.

4 WHEELBARROW

During a fight which broke out at the end of the quarter final match between America and Sao Caetano, one fan decided he’d chuck his twopence in as well. Only that twopence was a wheelbarrow, an object he lobbed over the fence towards the police. 

3 LEG OF LAMB

During a particularly fiery game between Ballymena United and Distillery in Ireland in March 2008, one fan lobbed a lamb’s leg on to the pitch. It was in response to an incident in which a horse’s head was left outside a hockey player’s home. A USPCA spokesman said the act ‘demonstrated general disregard for animal welfare’.

2 SCOOTER

Having already caused enough trouble to get a Uefa Cup tie with Alaves abandoned earlier in the season, Inter Milan Ultras managed to smuggle a moped into a league match with Atalanta in 2001, chucking it off the second tier on to the pitch.

1 DEAD CAT

The game between Charlton and Luton was interrupted in Jan, 1982, when the front half of a dead cat sailed over the heads of the away fans. On landing on the pitch, a policeman ‘gingerly nudged it to one side with his foot.’