Football Poets

Southend demoted from the Football League.

¶ 1 Leave a comment on verse 1 0 Southend United out of the Football League
It hardly seems possible but it’s true
The hard facts of life
Under those harsh lights of
Unwelcome publicity and
Yesterday’s fish and chip paper
Literature where the facts are
Written in bold typeface
Headline heartache
A Football League club once
But not now
That red hot poker into
The back, spine and heart
Broken asunder, ripped to
Shreds, Southend relegated
To the National League
We must have thought that this
Would never happen
There they were bobbing buoyantly
On the Essex Riviera
Never even remotely close
To high summit conferences in
The top flight where the aristos
Of the Premier League flaunt
Their classical status
With billions and millions of
Pompous plutocracy
Money pouring from gushing
Waterfalls of wealth,
Silvery streams pounding
Through the dams and reservoirs
Of Premier League pots of gold
While poor little Southend United
Dropped from a great height
Thunderously and alarmingly
Then thudding out of the Football League
And the mists of more obscurity
Whenever you spotted the skeletal remains
Of Roots Hall on childhood visits
To nearby Westcliff on Sea
The late summer floodlights like dancing
Ghostly spirits who never really
Threatened the status quo or the elevated elite
Phil Brown’s Shrimpers
Now dumped unceremoniously
Out of the big boys League
Fallen from grace
No longer star quality
We didn’t think for a minute
That indignity would ever visit
Their precious posts and bars,
Rattling and shaking terraces
Primitive as the Middle Ages
Hurt, rejected and discarded
As the ice cream cone at Rossi’s
That the young failed to lick in time
When just a flicker of anticipation
At season’s starting point
In August boded so well
But Southend crashed and foundered
On the rock of early autumn
Saturday afternoons in third and
Fourth tier football
Perhaps briefly in the second tier
Out of idle curiosity
Dipping their happy toes
Amid the higher levels
Of football’s purest waters
Now though Southend
Relegated out of the Football League
No longer mentioned at the latter
End of the Football Pools
No more Zetters or Littlewoods
To conjure with
Now a seaside town
With Essex harmonies
Then the simplicity of its bucket and
Spade childhood era
When summer lasted for ever
And windmills blew wistfully
For hours upon end
Now no longer on any radar
Just a fleeting rumour
Before the ref blew the final whistle
Roots Hall, now completely rootless
How Southend cling onto famous League
Cup glories where once Manchester United
Rolled up their socks in the sand
Planted their handkerchiefs
On Brylcreemed heads of hair
Oh you jest
United beaten in the League Cup
By scintillating Southend United
Once, but not that long ago
A feather in the cap of the Southend
Promenaders
How we grieve over the Shrimpers
Who once caught much bigger fish
But now nursing a painful wound
Of alienation in non League
Nowhere land
We must hope for a reunion
One day
Of course we will

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