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  • Profile picture of Graham Salter

    Graham Salter posted an update 5 years ago

    BACK IN TIME DOWN WHITE HART LANE
    As a child I drew crowds; row upon row,
    fifteen thousand little circles for the fans,
    some high in the stands, some arrayed on the Shelf
    cradled by that tight encircling wall
    (I’m capturing White Hart Lane
    at the start of the Hunter Davies years)
    the groundlings penned behind a white perimeter fence,
    watching Bobby Smith, Maurice Norman, Greavsie and Cliff Jones.
    Now look up, see what Archibald Leitch has designed,
    Like the gondola on a Zeppelin, a long white pressbox
    Above it a clock
    And on that a ball
    Then a cock
    Then a sky,
    No whiter than a Tottenham Hotspur shirt

    I tried to go back in the Nineties; the old East Stand had gone
    Someone was banging an anti-semitic drum
    (ironically I suppose)
    Not sure I like this, to be frank.
    Maybe this is Spurs’ way of getting their masochism in first
    “Always equalise before the opposition score”
    and I think
    If Sigmund Freud ever wandered up the Seven Sisters Road
    From Hampstead
    He’d have a field day

    But the Spurs go marching on, they do
    To a new home and a new Lane
    So there’s my prosaic bit of doggerel
    (Hang on to the ball for me, and don’t forget the cockerel)

Source: http://footballpoets.org/members/pendennis/activity/12499/