Football Poets

As Welcome as the sight of allotment smoke in December,
a quiet bonfire in the winter stillness,
are the compressed distances of Sports Report,
fingers hardened in the dusk after hours
of working the ground, […]

One day from under these floodlights
the sun will rise in early spring,
set like the memories you’ve left
in gathering blue over the river.

An extra layer will go, light jackets
the order of the day at some […]

Madejski of the methane vents, hero
of South Reading hinterland wastes
made shiny and blue for out-of-town games

at Junction 11: Madejski of the 1970’s
where the marlin fishing never ends
from South Florida […]

The lines, angles and shapes are wrong. Which
algal bloom will form when the ground has gone –
sunk or deserted – while for now Peru find time
left them, talent still potent, reminiscing
about far post […]

Somewhere beyond the wastes of Nizhny Novgorod
in enveloping white, the farthest reaches of night,
a train rattles on through heights and depths
with passengers lost to perspective journeying
through life to […]

At ‘The Stadiwm Vibrant Vapours’
on that sunlit evening, corporate sponsors
lacked the power of old resonances,
the simple terms the world could afford us:
Richmond Park, rumours of Gorseinon –
leagues […]

In air thin against the coast
where orange cliffs enclose
swimmers in the shallows

turbines shift with the wind at its approach;
a pylon catches, at the end of the sun’s
closing speech, new […]

With those air miles, Roy, you could tour the moons of Jupiter.
Ensure the planets are in correct formation,
no-one stepping beyond their sphere.

Your Wikipedia page has crashed my computer
somewhere between […]

Wanted man at Hounslow Central
Wanted man outside the Stoop
Wanted man on Chiswick High Road
Wanted man at Botanic Kew

Wanted man outside the Beehive
Wanted man in Osterley
Wherever you might look tonight […]

What if we forgot to start pre-season,
found a training camp for enjoying time
above crickets and distant fireflies?

What if we only started the season
to fulfil a contract? Where is the passion
which made […]

The biggest game, the culmination
of a fading season brought pause
to fans ranged across the masonry
of ancient stands in rival colours.

Penalties. The terminal feedback
of defeat, the draughtsman’s empty […]

How did we arrive here?
Carrying unfulfilled fixtures
of the missing from our city
to UEFA’s listening committee,
a tentative morning in the warm sun
of Kungstradgarden assembled faces
from the Stretford […]

Under a canopy of unbroken cloud,
across a junction over undropped kerbs
with gates and hedges for goals
and a wickedly uneven, improvised pitch,
you appeared in an urban field of dreams
arrayed on concrete […]

It’s the FA People’s Cup,
but who can understand
this affliction in the sun?

Fair weather to me is a bitter breeze,
high winds and a heavy squall,
ice patches on fourth generation
artificial surfaces, […]

Watching the sky change from Petticoat Tower,
on the top floor a widower
scans the gold of morning, hassle of twilight,
glimpses the holy land as old animosities
settle over gin and lemonade
with the old boy […]

A trophy haul to rival Ferguson’s,
but new seasons don’t feel so new any more.
An imaginary game in the village of Solva,

a training camp in the Austrian Alps,
immaculate pitches, mountains
and […]