Fans Supporting Foodbanks united Rangers and Celtic fans

Football fans in Liverpool were desperately aware of how badly foodbanks in the local area were struggling, and where better to start a collection than a place where 40,000 people gather at once?

On their first collection day - now seven years ago - Everton fans on Merseyside set up a food drive outside Goodison Park at an Everton/Manchester game using a wheelie bin as a receptacle for donations.

Co-founder Dave Kelly told our sister title The Herald: "It probably wasn't the smartest thing we'd ever done because we collected empty chip papers and beer bottles and only a small amount of food."

It may have made a lesser group quit in despair but, in a lesson on the power of persistence, the group returned the following week... and the week after that.

This was the very start of Fans Supporting Foodbanks.

Kelly added: "Now, more than 240 consecutive games on, we are collecting on average a tonne of food per Everton/Liverpool game.

"We can say now that 30% of all the food donated on Merseyside to the North Liverpool foodbank is getting collected outside Anfield and Goodison Park."

The pre-match ritual is a superstitious tradition long held by both footballers and football fans, and this new, benevolent pre-game routine has spread to clubs across Scotland.

Supporters groups have taken up the call at Partick Thistle, Rangers, Celtic, Kilmarnock, Dundee United, Dundee and Motherwell.

Outside Ibrox subway it's pitch black and a light drizzle has just saturated the pavement and everyone on it. But in the fluorescent light piercing from the train station a group of fans are holding a now-routine food collection.

John McDougall, 40, and Mitchell Gibson, 22, are gathering bags of goods that will be redistributed to foodbanks near the Rangers stadium.

"We were compelled to take part in collective action after seeing other clubs doing it and thinking we would give it a shot to help out as much as possible for people who need it," Gibson said.

McDougall tells a story of two women popping over to drop off food, seeing the collection was a bit low on donations and going to Lidl to buy more.

He and Gibson are being supported outside Ibrox by Andy Harris, of the Celtic Fans Supporting Foodbanks group, which gives to foodbanks based in the east end of Glasgow.

The 20-year-old has been volunteering from the start, when Celtic fans joined together with the four other founding clubs in March this year.

Harris, who was present when the fans hosted the first collection at Celtic Park before a match against Norwich, said: "You look around you and things have been getting a lot worse.

"We had the people willing to pitch in and help so it more felt like a dereliction of duty not to start doing it.

"People are generous - we've been really surprised at how supportive people have been. Some people bring a can a week or every second week, some turn up with shopping bags, but the response has been really good."

Everyone involved in Fans Supporting Foodbanks speaks of how the project confounds tired, negative stereotypes of football fans, which it undoubtedly does.

So it is of great pity that, outside Ibrox, some young scallywags in football colours decide to make a neat illustration of the contrast by running up and stealing the Fans Supporting Foodbanks banner during our photocall.

The Partick Thistle and Kilmarnock contingent make chase, asking for the banner back because "it's for foodbanks."

"F**k your foodbanks" the lads shout in return. But this isn't an indictment of football or fans. It's just... Glasgow, in all her glory.

The following day in the city's Southside a Liverpool van jammed with food arrives at its first stop on a tour of Glasgow's foodbanks, part of a collaboration with the Scottish groups.

Govanhill People's Pantry is receiving the first load of donations, overseen by Dave Kelly, some of the Rangers Fans Supporting Foodbanks volunteers and Joe Rollins, organiser with the union Unite.

On the breast of Kelly's jacket two hands clasp in unity, one red and one blue - the logo of Fans Supporting Foodbanks and a perfect encapsulation of the movement.

Even during lockdown, Kelly, an Everton fan, said, "we've never been found wanting"; those who would normally donate food instead gifted £390,000 altogether so volunteers could buy supplies.

As well as filling an immediate and practical need, Fans Supporting Foodbanks in England also lobbies for the right to food to be enshrined in legislation.

"We had this unusual mission statement when we first started and our mission statement was our number one aim was to be closed down," Kelly said.

"We were really conscious when we started off that we've got a humanitarian crisis on our streets in every major town and city around the UK and we were really conscious that we didn't want this to be a red thing or a blue thing or a Scouse thing.

"So everything we've done was deliberately generic so that other like-minded teams could run their own modelled on what we've done ourselves."

His proudest moment, Kelly says, was at the Celtic-Blackburn pre-season friendly when FSF Scotland was officially launched and Rangers fans turned up at Parkhead to collect food.

"I was jokingly saying that FSF was going to take credit for signing the Good Friday Food Agreement," he added.

"That is the power of football and that is the power of getting fans to work together collectively and put aside tribal differences.

"Our campaign's being run on the hashtag Hunger Doesn't Wear Club Colours - it doesn't have a race or a religion, it doesn't have a creed, it doesn't have a gender."

Now, more than 40 teams are represented by Fans Supporting Foodbanks groups and the collective has the modest aim of roping in every club in the UK.

Not all groups have the support of their clubs, various members say, because they are seen as "too political" with union involvement, criticism of the Conservative government and their lobbying efforts.

Unite became involved in the initiative because it was union members - Kelly and Ian Byrne, now an MP - who founded Fans Supporting Foodbanks.

Organiser Joe Rollins, who's based in Yorkshire, said: "Dave and Ian realised the shocking levels of poverty in Liverpool where these two huge football clubs generate millions and it weren't trickling down into their communities.

"They went to meet people in a local community centre and thought, 'Great, loads of people have shown up' but unfortunately it was actually a queue for the foodbank next door - and that's where the initiative started.

"This isn't charity, we consider this a solidarity act.

"Football is still a working class sport and the fact we can bring people together who are not natural friends is really capturing imaginations. We have rivalries. We all do. We have plenty in Barnsley but this work is more important."

One of the most creative of the Scottish groups has been Jags For Good, the Partick Thistle arm of the collective.

Supporters in Glasgow's Firhill have collected food but they've also seen season tickets donated to those in the community who can't afford live football matches and given out £11,000 of energy vouchers to tackle fuel poverty.

Most recently, the group held a Christmas collection for Glasgow Baby Food Bank and donations and donations were handed over by goalie Jamie Sneddon.

One of the bonuses for Jags For Good has been how willing players have been to pitch in and help out.

Sneddon said: “When Jags For Good was first established the players got together immediately and agreed that we wanted to help and support the initiative as much as we possibly could.

“We’d all rather the projects Jags For Good get behind weren’t required, however the reality in 2022 is that lots of people need some extra help and the message from Partick Thistle via Jags For Good is that we are here for them.

"Visiting the Baby Food Bank was a powerful experience."

Jags For Good co-founder Neil Cowan said the group was inspired by Fans Supporting Foodbanks in Liverpool with the firm knowledge that Thistle supporters would be keen to help.

He said: "Because we're a smaller club, when you're a Thistle fan you almost feel like you recognise people and you know people's faces from games more so than a larger club.

"In that way, the club feels closer to us more so than a larger club.

"As a Thistle fan you're part of a tight community so I found it very easy to think 'who is a Thistle fan I know who could help with this?' which I imagine is easier than with a larger club like Celtic or Rangers.

"Response has been amazing but it's a disgrace that we have to do this. We shouldn't have to stand outside football grounds collecting food, we shouldn't have to buy energy vouchers, football fans shouldn't be doing that.

"I'd much rather just go along to Firhill and be miserable because of what's on the pitch rather than what we're having to do. It's a shame that it has to be.

"Foodbanks in many ways are symbolic of what's good about our communities but what's wrong with our country."

The Rangers group met through Twitter and have been chivvied to keep going by the powerhouse that is Ashley Baxter - everyone The Herald speaks to mentions her name.

Baxter is also in Govanhill to help with the food donation delivery. She's a season ticket holder and never misses a match so felt she and her "strong personality" were right to push the Fans Supporting Foodbanks initiative at Ibrox.

Her aim is to see at least 10 per cent of the 40,000 to 50,000 people who come to games bring a food item with them for donation.

"We're still relatively new so we're still trying to establish a name for ourselves," she said, "And I'm certain that not a lot of people know about us yet but I'm excited to see what will happen when the word gets out.

"The generosity of Rangers fans has been exceptional. At our last game we collected enough food to feed a family of four for six weeks.

"When you put it in tangible terms like that it does show the difference that football fans can make."

The kindness of fans and the generosity of the Liverpool contingent in sharing their donations across Glasgow is, Baxter said, a moving experience.

"I welled up, I felt really emotional about that - the amount of effort [Liverpool] went to.

"Right now it does feel like the only people in the world who are winning at the moment are the rich and big businesses and that doesn't seem fair to me, if that doesn't make you angry it should.

"And I think that's why we all need to stand together collectively as one because everyone should believe in the right to food."