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The People’s Other Poet (Ian Holloway)

Crispin Thomas

Monday, January 10th, 2011

1 Leave a comment on verse 1 0 met him on a train down in London town*
we’d both been to the very same ground
always comes out with the best quotes around
does our Ian

2 Leave a comment on verse 2 0 sat behind him once down at Plymouth Argyle*
he was a Pilgrim icon for a while
no-one comes near to that Holloway style…
he’s just ‘Olly

3 Leave a comment on verse 3 0 rat-a-tat delivery just like a tank
can’t really ever see him managing a bank
aparently “it’s his fault the Titanic sank!”
or so he says

4 Leave a comment on verse 4 0 some of his quote go right off the scale
some of his stories make the media turn pale
one thing’s for sure Ian’ll never ever fail
to be real

5 Leave a comment on verse 5 0 not much you could teach Holloway at school
and even before he ever managed Blackpool
he said “he and the town were similar” (and cool)
“cause they both looked good in the dark!”

6 Leave a comment on verse 6 0 some of his answers are right top-drawer
ask a silly question and you get ‘what-for’
doesn’t write here but he’s wecome for sure
is our Ian

7 Leave a comment on verse 7 0 doesnt have a mock-tudor mansion in Surrey
doesn’t waste time always answers in a hurry
and when they asked him once “Any injury worries?”
he just replied…”No, I’m fully fit, thank you”

© CT11

Notes

Editor:What would we do wthout Ian Holloway (and Stuart Hall for that matter).
*I worked at the Pilgrim Study Centre at Argyle once and and met him again in a carriage at Paddington bound for Bristol one night… after a Chelsea Champions League game he’d been co-commentating on – while in between jobs. What a salt of the earth bloke. A few more classic Ian Hollway quotes here:

“If you’re a burglar, it’s no good poncing about outside somebody’s house, looking good with your swag bag ready. Just get in there, burgle them and come out. I don’t advocate that obviously, it’s just an analogy. ”

“Why haven’t they got cameras? The officials can speak to each other easily enough now. Why aren’t we using laptops that are linked up and can give a decision in five seconds? A chimpanzee could do it – with not much training. We might as well go back to being cavemen, grab our girl by the hair, drag her into the cave whether she wants to come in or not because we may as well live in that age. We’ve come forward, haven’t we? (Sport Quotes of the Week. ‘BBC Sport’).

“In the first-half we were like the Dog and Duck, in the second-half we were like Real Madrid. We can’t go on like that. At full-time I was at them like an irritated Jack Russell.”
(On Blackpool 2 Crystal Palace 2, 20 March 2010. Quoted in match report on BBC Sport: Football website), .

“I’d rather do that than build chicken sheds no-one wanted!”
(On Blackpool making the Championship play-off final in 2010 having spent a year out of football making hen houses. )

“In football you need to have everything in your cake mix to make the cake taste right. One little bit of ingredient that Tony uses in his cake that gets talked about all the time is Rory’s throw. Call that cinnamon and he’s got a cinnamon flavoured cake. It’s not fair and it’s not right and it’s only a small part of what he does.”
On Tony Pulis’s style of management. Mirror Football, 10 December 2010

Source: http://footballpoets.org/poems/the-peoples-other-poet-ian-holloway/