A matchday programme is a fascinating time capsule where cutting-edge fan engagement collides with deep local nostalgia. Spread across pages 18 and 19 of the March 2015 edition, readers were presented with a perfect snapshot of mid-2010s football culture right next to a beloved piece of Groningen’s post-war culinary history.
On the left page, the club proudly announced that Albert Rusnak had been voted the Essent Man of the Match against FC Dordrecht, securing 27% of the fan vote to narrowly beat Lorenzo Burnet. The voting mechanism? Premium SMS. Fans inside and outside the Euroborg were instructed to text “GRO (space) RUGNUMMER to 4040” at a cost of 60 eurocents per message. This paid SMS system was the bridge between the analog era of filling out paper ballots and the modern era of free, instant app voting. The leaderboard for the Player of the Year was tight, with legends like Eric Botteghin and Tjaronn Chery leading the pack, following in the footsteps of previous winners like Virgil van Dijk and Dušan Tadić.
But shifting your eyes to the right page revealed a completely different kind of local pride. A beautiful, retro-styled advertisement announced the return of Brander Mayonaise. This wasn’t just any condiment; it was an absolute phenomenon in post-war Groningen, originally served at the Brander cafeteria on the Grote Markt. After vanishing for over thirty years, the recipe was acquired and resurrected by Oliehoorn. The ad proudly declared: “Terug van weggeweest!” (Back from being gone!). For older fans sitting in the stands reading this, it was a sudden, delicious wave of nostalgia, triggering memories of eating chips in the city center decades before the Euroborg was even a blueprint.
A Look into the Future
By 2026, the concept of paying 60 cents to send an SMS vote feels like ancient history, entirely replaced by frictionless, free voting via official club smartphone apps. Albert Rusnák, the SMS winner that day, would soon score the historic winning goals in the 2015 KNVB Cup final before carving out a highly successful career in Major League Soccer (MLS) in the United States. Meanwhile, Brander Mayonaise successfully cemented its comeback. The distinctive, slightly spiced mayonnaise secured its place not just in local cafetarias across the north, but on supermarket shelves, proving that while football technology evolves rapidly, a truly great local recipe is timeless.