From weeping and cheering
from street to stadium
from winter to summer
and from dawn til dusk,
this game connects and shares in all
a care to care for each and everyone of us.
Love it or hate it
win or lose
a passion for fighting
joining in and joining up
playing up and playing out
with an agreed set of rules,
a spending of energy
and release of tension
where the battle is safe
and the guns shoot compassion
where I share my street
and shoot to kill mistrust and fear
and die for the love of the game,
where the pain of loss can be quietly loved
and the joy of triumph tossed high above
whilst one holds respect for the other and vice versa
the other for the one..
the one spirit of football
the one love
a ball and a field
a sword and a shield
this one’s for you
and this one’s for me
be proud and humble
steady and stumble
play on
play out
play with and without
play it down and out.
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Latest Comments
21st July 2017 at 12:57 pm
Nicely done.
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19th May 2017 at 6:02 pm
Great poem on a wonderful achievement for FGR.
Now let’s hope my team and Forest Green battle it out for top spot next season. If the Sky Blues top the division the vegan pies are on me ! ☺
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19th May 2017 at 5:48 pm
Wonderful, touching poem. You have done them proud expressing your feelings about their achievement.
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5th May 2017 at 1:19 pm
Good luck! Hope to see you on Sunday if I can make it.
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3rd May 2017 at 5:40 pm
Great use of wordplay on names Ianthe. Especially liked Lingard…as in a classic Cranberries song’Let It Lingar!’
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9th April 2017 at 9:21 pm
Hi Graham – I’m really pleased to see that you’re annotating your poems verse-by-verse. Did you know you can also highlight a bit of text in a verse and comment on that? Hover over this comment to see what I highlighted.
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9th April 2017 at 9:10 pm
Not forgetting folk hero Robin Friday who started a now commonplace trend by kissing a policeman after scoring against Rochdale in 1975
“The policeman looked so cold and fed up standing there that I decided to cheer him up a bit,” he explained.
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7th April 2017 at 1:29 pm
Yes. We played footy in the street, and Peter Lorimer (not me) broke the window-pane at number twenty-eight. Kenneth Wolstenholme was particularly impressed, and Leeds meet Chelsea in the semi-final.
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6th April 2017 at 12:03 pm
Great imagery Alex…
Playing in the street….grumpy neighbours..I go back to my old fifties Wharfdale Street , just off the Ifield Road sometimes Alex.
It’s barely a bright tennis ball’s throw from Stamford Bridge.We’d play for hours across that little street , stopping only for Remo’s ice cream van. So few car back then. I remember mad scores like 53-41 .
We’d often play til it was so dark, we couldn’t see that little yellow ball anymore sometimes..
The marking on the old brick wall in streets now lined with cars 24 x 7 are faint… but still there.
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4th April 2017 at 3:10 pm
A touching tribute to a quaint old ground, with its compact pitch and small white gable.
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