Football Poets

In the land of TV, milk and
Brazen commercialism
The gentlemen of Accrington Stanley
Drink in the calcium goodness
Victory of FA Cup glory
A long way to go for those
Who devour the Lancashire hotpot
With […]

If you’ve ever been there
If you’ve had the call
If you’ve had that feeling
Writing’s on the wall
Like some guilty party
In your heart you know
There is no alternative
When it’s time to go

Whe […]

No longer in the drop zone
Relegation put on hold
In that awkward area
Of abeyance but for how
Long. Today but maybe not
After FA Cup battles at
Derby. West Ham clinging on
For dear life, near
Trapdoors […]

Where are we?
Joint Bottom!
Who we with?
With Soton.
Where are we?
Joint Bottom.
Rip it up, start over again.

Past glories?
Forgotten!
Finances?
They’re rotten.
Where are we?
Joint Bottom. […]

Here we are all together
In the boisterous world
Of football’s infancy
Neither screaming or crying
Since that would be sour grapes
The beginning of another year
And time to ponder the wondrous
Literary […]

So here we go in a breathless gallop
A race through the FA Cup third round
Results, shocks, giant killers
All in one huge documentary of
Purple prose, but surely not from
These ink stained keyboards
Not […]

Picture The Scene. Sloane Street. London. 10-52…

An empty sherbet, flagged down by a bald good-looking bloke,
Says, clearly desperate to get his derriere up and on the go,
“Driver, please take me to The C […]

Vialli Vialli
In stereophonic symmetry
Crying out across the land
Tonight at the Bridge
Chelsea lower their flags
For their beloved one
Gianluca Vialli
Today departs from
His West London home
Of his […]

The blue Azzurri fire that burned
when I first saw you on my screen
one Nineties Sunday Channel 4
Sampdoria your long time home

the passion in your play that shone
as bright as bright for all to […]

Christmas, has just flown past
Flags are flapping at half-mast
An air o’ melancholy floats upon the breeze
Sauntering past a cinders football pitch
I relive every battle, fought upon it
When we feared n […]

“If The Toon score now, he’ll do his nut
He’s lost his marbles, near enough
What’s with all that static down the touch-line?”,
“Geezers totally lost the plot
Drop a couple o’ Yorkshires in the pot
No, I’m […]

Hmm…not sure a bunch o’ smug smiling faces
Being papped at a legends lying in state equates,
To what’s commonly known as respect in good taste?
But hey…like the cloggers, inept thugs
The Man…made […]

So this New Year we were Coventry bound
Family ready to Auld Lang Syne in the land
Where once Jimmy Hill’s beard and chin
Bristled with comforting oratory
Chit chat about everything
From the maximum wage […]

A mighty man of six feet three
And weighing fourteen stone
When Palace struggled in the First
John Jackson stood alone.

John (Stonewall) Jackson
Kept Palace up for years
How he never got an England cap
Is […]

Always tired
of the question
who is the best ever player

I would say
It doesn’t matter !

Say that Mozart is above
Bach or choose
Between Paul Mc Cartney
and Elvis

It doesn’t matter
There is no […]

I was 10 years old when I first saw you
that steamy Summer of ’58 the World Cup …Sweden
when before you – for me
there had only been one hero…Jimmy Greaves.

we’d only had our tele a year
but there y […]

And lo!
God set man upon earth
And Pelé unto football

God gave humankind legs
So that we might walk
And Pele dance

God gave us brains
So that our minds might reach to the future with emboldened […]

The grace of genius
In the blood
Subtle as a glance
The intuitive knowledge
Announced with
The undisputed joy
The twinkle in the eyes
The generous heart
Pouring its power
Into the eager legs
The willing […]

We knew it would happen
But we couldn’t be sure when
It was the day football
Might have been dreading
A dark pall of depression
Hovers over the Beautiful Game
Pele, the master of over all
Dies amid a welter […]

Late summer 1990
Germany had won the World Cup in that July
And as the days turned towards Autumn
I spent a sunny Sunday afternoon in Hebden Bridge
Just a stone throw from my Pennine home
And a million […]