The Newcastle midfielder visited the city’s West End Foodbank as the club’s fans and staff help the local community

Only seven miles separate Newcastle’s West End Foodbank in Benwell and the north‑east footballers’ mecca of Darras Hall but they represent parallel universes.

“It’s crazy,” reflects Isaac Hayden, Newcastle United midfielder and occasional volunteer at an initiative now widely known as the NUFC fans food bank. “You think: ‘How is it we’ve got these massive mansions, yet a few miles up the road people are queueing for food?’”

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Fifteen minutes’ drive north from Benwell the generous car park at the Ponteland branch of Waitrose is frequently jam-packed, while in neighbouring Darras Hall the average price of a detached property exceeds £1m, with some mini‑palaces fetching closer to £2.5m.

Hayden’s journey south to the food bank sweeps him past Newcastle’s fast-expanding international airport before continuing through upmarket, leafy Woolsington. Many locals are probably oblivious of the food bank’s existence, let alone the need for one.

Others have been made aware of its presence only because of the heavy involvement of Newcastle United and their fans in helping to underwrite what has become the UK’s largest food bank.

Season-ticket holders from the city’s affluent suburbs have been introduced to uncomfortable truths about the extreme social problems which sometimes exist barely a long goal-kick away from their comfortable homes.

They are not alone. Fans of other clubs involved in similar food-bank alliances – Bournemouth, Burnley, Everton, Huddersfield, Liverpool, Manchester City, Millwall and Queens Park Rangers among them – appreciate the depth of the culture shock involved.

“At first I thought it would be collecting a few cardboard boxes filled with tins of food,” says Bill Corcoran, a key instigator and driver of the NUFC fans initiative. “But then I was told about the scale of the problem, which causes the mind to boggle. I was taught things about what was going on in my city I never knew about.”

Corcoran’s tutor was Michael Nixon, who has just retired after five inspiring years in charge of the West End Food bank. Appropriately, Nixon received an ovation when he took to the stage to address fans gathered to question a panel of north-east football writers during a fund-raiser at Tyneside’s Irish Centre last Thursday night.

With organisers selling stylish black and white “Toon Aid” replica tops and hoodies and the discussion covering takeovers, transfers and Rafael Benítez’s future, the evening made more than £2,000. Significantly the Trussell Trust – which runs a network of more than 400 UK food banks – calculates that Newcastle United and their fans contributed more than £100,000 during 2017.

Many donations are made at the collection point outside St James’ Park which Nixon manned every home game and will now be staffed by his successor, John McCorry. Benítez has given generously and entertained Nixon as his “manager’s guest of honour” during last week’s draw with Burnley. and Lee Charnley, the oft-maligned club chief executive, is another staunch supporter.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Everton and Liverpool fans hold a banner in support of food banks at half-time in a Merseyside derby at Anfield. The area close to both clubs’ stadiums is one of the poorest in Europe. Photograph: John Powell/Liverpool FC via Getty Images

Charnley has regularly completed shifts on the food distribution frontline as a low-profile, publicity‑shy, volunteer. “We can disagree with Newcastle United on many things,” says Corcoran, who knows that often modestly paid club staff make weekly financial offerings to the project. “But one thing we can agree on is how well it’s got behind the NUFC fans food bank.

“Whatever the problems on or off the pitch, we can be proud of the food bank collection. It’s shown the depth of compassion of Newcastle fans – the reservoir of goodwill that exists here.”

The need for such generosity is far from confined to Tyneside. After all Benwell’s clientele are a microcosm of a nationwide syndrome. “Fifteen per cent of people coming to us are on zero‑hours contracts,” says Nixon, who helped around 1,000 people a month, many neither unemployed or infirm. “They’re the working poor.”

Sam Allardyce is another who is suitably appalled. “It’s extremely depressing,” said Everton’s manager, who has become the public face of Everton’s work with the North Liverpool food bank, which assists more than 250 people a week. “People in work can’t afford to live at a decent level and have to go to food banks to feed themselves and their children. It’s incredibly sad that a country like ours has allowed that to happen. It’s going back to the dark ages. It’s a disgrace.”

If the area surrounding Goodison Park remains one of Europe’s poorest with up to 42% of families living beneath the poverty line, nor is Dorset immune from hunger.

Accordingly Bournemouth and their supporters have recently answered an appeal from their local food bank and organised supermarket trolley collections at home games. “It’s absolutely fantastic to have the club involved,” says Ed Briggs, warehouse manager at Bournemouth food bank. “We distribute to six different sites, mainly churches. In the last financial year, we fed almost 5,000 local people in crisis and demand is increasing.”

Four-bedroom terraced homes in Fulham’s Studdridge Street regularly sell for more than £2m but the road also houses the Hammersmith and Fulham food bank where organisers are grateful for QPR’s involvement. “People here are in desperate need,” says the club’s winger cum food bank volunteer, David Wheeler. “They can’t afford to buy food.”

Hayden struggles to comprehend the situation. “People don’t want extravagant things,” he says. “It’s cans of beans, cans of soup, cereal, bread, the basics – it’s about making sure they survive. It’s a different world. It’s sad it’s happening in the 21st century.”