From the CBC archives: When the 'beer snake' was banned

The beer cup snake can once again be spotted in its natural habitat — at Winnipeg Blue Bombers home games, that is — but it was just five years ago today that it suddenly became an endangered species.

Also known as just the "beer snake," the long chain of empty plastic cups stacked by beer-drinking Bomber fans was a common sight at Canad Inns Stadium until July 14, 2010.

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That was when the football club officially banned beer snakes, following complaints from several fans about being hit and cut by a shower of tossed plastic cups.

"If there is any hint of the beer snake, for example, gaining momentum … we are going to ask our security people to have those fans please discontinue it, and we expect that we'll get their respect," Jim Bell, the club's president at the time, told reporters that day.

The complaints were prompted when, at a game five days earlier, other fans had thrown their own used cups from seats above and behind the snake, which stretched thousands of cups and dozens of rows long.

But Bombers fans were divided on whether the beer snake should go, as the CBC's Randell Mauricio reported at the time. Watch his story in the video player above.

The Bombers allowed fans to build beer snakes again this season, but only within the Fanatic Fan Zone at Investors Group Field.