Football Poets

I can’t wait for the start of the season
it’s an ongoing long-run affair
it’s only a game and I can’t quite explain
but something keeps drawing me there
it’s the walk up the hill in all weathers
it’s that fortnightly journey alone
it’s great expectation and sometimes frustration
this terrace that’s my second home

it began as a kid in the city
standing in huge teeming grounds
on concrete and stone with my mates or alone
surrounded by mayhem and sounds
and now I am here in the country
with a stadium high on a hill
it’s a far smaller place in a green open space
but it still has that magical thrill
and despite ev’rything we have been through
in a world that was changed in a day
we will stand here once more or we’ll sit like before
even though it may not go away

there’ll be faces I’ve known through the seasons
though I barely can tell you their names
but we’ll go through it all ev’ry rise ev’ry fall
and the passion will still be the same
and each time it starts there’s a whisper
a feeling of what it could bring
a hope that lies burning a longing a yearning
that beckons within everything

there’s a buzz at the start of the season
it’s a feeling that’s hard to describe
and you never quite know how the new one will go
to advance or to simply survive
but the being there outweighs the downsides
like places in life I have known
it’s the anticipation and special vibration
this terrace that’s my second home