Sporting chance of some decent grub

What's the food like at your local football, cricket or rugby ground?
Football fan eating pie
A fan at Kidderminster Harriers FC ground with a pie. Photograph: David Sillitoe

Who ate all the pies? It was a question I couldn't help but wonder at the England-Croatia match the other night while working my way through a three-course, pre-match meal of smoked salmon followed by roast leg of duck and finished off with a sweet rhubarb tart.

I'd been invited into Wembley's palatial corporate hospitality suite by a business contact (for me, a rare glimpse of life on the other side, I hasten to add; I'm more accustomed to watching my team of choice hoof it around in the earthier confines of League One).

In Club Wembley it's posh nosh all the way, with champagne and seafood bars at every turn. But you won't be surprised to hear it's a different story down among the hoi polloi, where despite long queues snaking along the concourses, ordinary fans have not taken well to Wembley's depressing insistence on fleecing customers at the rate of £8 a head for "very best restaurant-style" burgers and fries.

Perhaps football supporters need to take a leaf from cricket's book and start bringing their own. At cricket grounds up and down the country it's common to see fans turn up with carrier bags stuffed with sandwiches, pork pies, cakes and other picnic goodies. Then again, I guess cricket fans are a special case; there's nothing like spending a whole day sitting in the rain to focus your mind on eating.

Over time, different foods get associated with different spectator sports; at football and rugby it's meat pies, at racing and equestrian events it's pork rolls and at darts it's, er, scampi-in-a-basket. But things can and do move on. In the United States, where baseball has traditionally been associated with soggy hot dogs and watery beer, an interesting trend began a few years ago when the Baltimore Orioles began selling regional cuisine like pit beef platters and Maryland crab cake sandwiches on match days.

Visit a baseball game now and you'll often find local specialities for sale like deep-fried cod topped with coleslaw and tartar sauce on a bun (Chicago), roast pork–provolone–broccoli rabe sandwiches (Philadelphia), or beef fajitas with grilled bell peppers, sweet onions, and fresh cilantro on a soft flour tortilla (Houston).

What's the grub like at your local football, cricket or rugby ground? Are certain foods inherently more suited to watching certain sports than others? Or is there a local dish that you think your team should adopt as its own?

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