West Ham fans gift 60 tonnes of food even as football club embarrasses itself | OneFootball

What does it mean to be a football supporter in the 21st century? A new book from Alex Timperley of MCFC Fans Foodbank Support – ‘For the Love: How Football Supporters Can Change the World’ – tries to answer that question.

It examines what our clubs really are, what supporters are up against and how we can organise effectively against billionaire owners and powerful broadcasters. Most importantly, it shows how the same tactics, cooperation and solidarity can be harnessed to reestablish the link between football and its communities to transform life for working-class people up and down the country.

This extract shows how they do it at West Ham, where their solid supporter community provides help for vulnerable people far beyond East London…

From East London to the world (Essex branch)

John Ratomski is a lifelong West Ham United supporter and the man who took Fans Supporting Foodbanks to London’s East End with Irons Supporting Foodbanks. He started up collections in 2020 outside the London Stadium and has collected donations from West Ham Supporters ever since.

“I see myself as a facilitator,” says John. “I looked at local foodbanks in Newham and Stratford and came across Newham Foodbank, which at the time was part of the Trussell Trust. I thought, well, they’re a safe bet. They’ll operate within legislation and so on. But then over time we found that there were lots of other foodbanks where we could become more active in the community.”

This is well-worn territory for football supporters who support foodbanks. They start local and then begin to spread out over time as the potential impact they can have becomes clearer.

If you’re reading this and wondering how to get started, it’s no more complicated than this. Find your local foodbank and give them a call, then see how it goes.

John’s story offers further inspiration on this front. The collections at West Ham are unusual because the donations are almost entirely cash. Most other groups will get more food donations, or at least a mix of food and cash, but not at West Ham. For whatever reason, Hammers prefer giving money. That led John into something of a rabbit hole which he has been exploring for six years.

He said: “Up until three years ago, Newham would be taking away all the money collected on a match day. While they would write back and say ‘we’ve got X hundred pounds, thank you’ we never knew where it was going. It was Dave Kelly that said we should be raising our own money and distributing it how we pleased to increase our impact. So we set up another little collection point by Hackney Wick Station which brought us in maybe a hundred pounds a game. And then the Supporters Club did something similar. So I took the decision about two years ago that we could do more with it.”

John and his group started using the money to buy food wholesale and distribute it to multiple foodbanks. When you do it like this, every £500 can buy a pallet of food worth £2,000. Newham Foodbank still get pallets delivered to them on a regular basis, but Irons Supporting Foodbanks now does so much more. John has diversified into East Essex, following the vast West Ham diaspora, and supplies over 120 foodbank centres. The geographic range of his group now stretches all the way up past Colchester to Braintree and beyond.

It’s not just food that John and his team supply, either. Clothes are discarded almost as casually as food in modern society. Manufacturers and clothing brands bring new ranges out and have to get rid of the old ones somewhere. The same applies to football clubs. West Ham changed their sponsor and suddenly had a huge number of shirts they couldn’t contractually sell or have in the club. Many of these clothes find their way to John Ratomski, who then distributes them to the homeless and other needy groups.

“We find out through the network who needs what,” says John. “We’ve got community groups we can send kids’ clothes to. And then the homeless groups in other locations. We supply hoodies for homeless groups in Chelmsford, for example. We have a weekly stay session, so we supply large clothes and adults’ clothes for them. And it just goes on, and kind of ticks over by itself.”

Whether giving someone in need a West Ham shirt counts as a kindness is a question I will leave readers to answer themselves! However, the upshot is the huge level of help that West Ham supporters, facilitated by John, have provided to the people who need it most. John estimates that more than £2m of clothes and 60 tonnes of food have been either donated or funded by West Ham supporters in the last six years. That’s a phenomenal amount, and John is very clear that it is the supporters who should take credit for this, even though West Ham United have made Irons Supporting Foodbanks an official charity partner in recent years.

“It’s nice, but it’s secondary for us,” says John. “It’s always the supporters that have to take the credit for what we do. It’s always been about them. If the club wants to do something then that’s great, that’s a bonus. But it’s the fans in the community that we need to ensure are appreciated. And I mean, it leads us across the country. If we can do this then why can’t Tottenham? Why can’t Arsenal? Why can’t Crystal Palace and other clubs get involved in the national network?

“I often say that we’ve got well over half a million supporters going to games every weekend supporting their local team. And if that turned into donations of 50p a head, what would that do? It’s all positive, there’s no-one siphoning anything off. It goes to the good of the community, those that are struggling. And it raises the good profile of the football supporter – because I think there’s still a bit of stigma about hooliganism. But if you can show the good side of the football fan now, the families that go, kids with face paint and stuff like that, there’s so much more we can tap into and change the feeling about what a football supporter is now.”

John has first-hand experience of this having welcomed former Inter City Firm member Bill Gardner to collect donations with Irons Supporting Foodbanks. He now comes back to donate regularly and is a big supporter of the foodbank. In fact, West Ham supporters are united in that support. The 2025 protests against the club’s ownership were enormous and involved thousands of people boycotting the game. However, the organisers went out of their way to ensure that the foodbank collections didn’t stop.

“Paul Colborne and Andy Payne of Hammers United used to have their protest alongside us and would often ask fans to come and make a donation. We’ve been featured on their socials and by various YouTubers. They all know us. Hammers Chat, West Ham Network, West Ham Football and all the rest. We’re not a secret and they all give us plugs. When the protests were happening, Paul Colborne acknowledged the potential impact and made sure supporters were aware so we didn’t lose out.”

This symbiotic relationship between supporters organising for football and foodbank purposes is thriving at West Ham and the impact is clear, even away from the football. John says: “We have a West Ham fan who made our flag for us. He approached me in mid-2025, saying he was working with the guys at Jaguar who are likely to lose their jobs over what happened with the ransomware attack. He asked for our contacts at the food wholesaler and in the end they bought two pallets, four grand’s worth of food, for the workers at Jaguar who were going to lose their income. We can help other people through what we know and that knowledge and network we’ve built up over the years.”

Football and community are one and the same at West Ham. John and Irons Supporting Foodbanks are one example, but the relationship between club and community has deep roots in the East End. Supporters are rallying against the club owners and rebuilding that community link at the same time. It’s a shining example of what can be done when ordinary football supporters decide to take action.