From the Merthyr cob to Undy’s Welsh cakes…how Welsh football food has helped attract thousands to twitter

By Jack Cleaver

FOR some football fans, the half-time pie – or any other snack for that matter – is as important as the game itself.

No wonder then that a novel twitter page devoted to the best – and worst – kinds of grub at football grounds the length and breadth of the UK is picking up followers by the thousand.

Footyscran is the brainchild of Tom Silbey, Wolves supporter and air conditioning engineer.

His account finds the best and worst food at grassroots stadiums from football fans in the past year.

FootyScran is a Twitter and Instagram which encourages fans to send in pictures to impress or humiliate other clubs. Silbey spoke about his reasoning for creating this account back in October 2020.

He said: “We all know a lot of people love football and we all know a lot of people love food so putting them together seemed the right thing to do.

“So in lockdown I started footyscran, posting old photos of food and drinks at the football.

“But with it being in prime lockdown I was getting sent no new content at all. I built the account to a couple thousands of followers but stopped with it after I was getting no messages.”

However, things were about to take a turn for the better.

Tom continued: “I was reading some tweets not long ago talking about burgers at football stadiums and that instantly sprung footy scran back into my mind. After I started it back up within 10 days I reached 50,000 followers.”

The Twitter page now boasts more than 64,000 followers and such growth in popularity saw it make an appearance on the TalkSport breakfast show.

“The main gain has been from TalkSport for sure, Laura Woods and Ally McCoist did about a five minute segment on their breakfast show where they went through my tweets and reviewed them,” said Tom.

“Ally McCoist was loving the Chinese at Reading, but they all agreed that the pea dog at Burscough was meant for the bin!”

A lot of Welsh clubs have been seen on the page with tweets about Undy AFC’s Welsh cakes. Tom said of those: “People go crazy for them it seems but we haven’t been sent a photo, only many tweets talking about them.”

One of the most mentioned of food items at Welsh clubs is the famous Merthyr Town cob.

“The Merthyr Town cob is one of the best in football food,” Tom insisted.

“It’s been one of our most favoured posts and gained us a lot of attraction, it’s such a good creation other clubs in the non-league set-up are copying it.”