Walton is the only UK constituency to boast two football clubs: Liverpool and Everton are half a mile apart at the opposite ends of Stanley Park. When we visit on 21 September 2019, outside local MP Dan Carden's office on Priory Road there is a transit van that is usually seen on match days parked up outside Anfield and Goodison Park. It bears the motto ‘Hunger Doesn't Wear Club Colours’.

Fans Supporting Foodbanks is an initiative set up by Dave Kelly and Ian Byrne to tackle food poverty in their city. “Dave's the Evertonian and I’m the Liverpudlian,” Byrne tells us. The idea first came to the pair when they spotted a queue of people just down the road from where the MP's office is situated. “I thought it was for the bingo,” Byrne says. “It was an independent foodbank run on donations from the community. But the community hasn't got nothing. We saw the pantry. It was just pitiful.”

As well as being a fan activist, Ian Byrne is Dan Carden's office manager. As he explains, every other week some 60,000 people pour into Anfield and 45,000 into Goodison to watch their teams play. “We thought if football fans brought in one tin, then that would make a huge difference,” he says. “Now one quarter of all food donations coming into 13 foodbanks in North Liverpool comes from fans.” The cause has been adopted by the teams and the van was bought with a donation of £30,000 from Liverpool's chief executive, Peter Moores.

Fans Supporting Foodbanks brings food to donate to rival fans’ foodbanks during away fixtures, as a show of solidarity; and an idea that began with “a couple of wheelie bins” (as Byrne puts it) outside the two grounds has spawned similar initiatives outside football stadiums up and down the country.

The initiative featured in an article in the New York Times quoting Philip Alston, the UN's special rapporteur for extreme poverty, describing food poverty in the UK as a ‘social calamity’. ‘And so, across the country … soccer, and in particular its fans, has stepped into the breach,’ the article continued. ‘In front of stadiums filled with multimillionaire superstars, fans have taken it upon themselves to help those who need it most.’