Scoring at home

Probably the worst place in England to get a decent pint of beer is almost any football ground. the main problem is that most grounds have sponsorship deals with the multinational lager brewers, who feel that in return it is their privilege to foist fizzy tasteless commercial goop to the fans.
Of late however, we are thankfully seeing minor moves away from this. At my own team's home - the Valley, ground of Charlton Athletic - the sponsorship deal is with Heineken UK, the same company that managed to persuade Americans that their nasty Dutch lager was a premium brand. All that meant was that they paid more for a beer that was little better than their own nasty Budweiser.
Heineken are to beer what the Dutch greenhouse plantations are to tomatoes: they produce stuff that is the right colour but has no taste. It stands for homogenisation, economies of scale and lousy produce.
However, they do own Courage, which was once a fine old British brewery that produced decent if unremarkable traditional bitter. I firmly believe Heineken's dearest wish was to do away with it altogether in favour of John Smith's, a fairly grim 'cream flow' pressurised mass market drink with only a slight relationship to real ale. But with British consumers increasingly rediscovering their taste buds, we at Charlton are lucky enough to have got the sponsors to serve us Courage Bitter - straight from a cask rather then through a gassy pump - in the home fans' North Stand. It may not be the best beer in the world but at least it tastes like beer. We are duly grateful.
It would be nice to see the trend continue and spread. To this extent the greatest example has to be Brighton and Hove Albion's new ground - sponsored by Amex of all people - now regularly offers two local Sussex ales from Harvey's and the excellent Dark Star micro. Unusually they also stay open after the match so fans can enjoy a drink in situ and watch highlights of the game.
That sounds like a winner!