Football Poets

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 […]

A tea cosy hat –
the strange shape of loyalty.

The Hammersmith and Fulham crest
says ‘I stood among terrace weeds.’

Long distance coaches
crawled north for bitter days
on broken trajectories.

The tracksuits […]

Clouds were grey and yellow above waves
below verandahs where Magpies thronged
en route to Thursday in Bordeaux

from south coast weather, a Portsmouth low,
to a liner’s isolated corners,
transitory bars, sea […]

No bitterness in the lemon
No sweetness to the lime
No liquid in the bladder
No water into wine

No nonsense in the bitter
No suspension on appeal
No magic in the mushrooms
No Carrick in midfield

No bonfire of […]

He plays in the middle
like it’s June on the reef
with a touch as light as lemon drizzle,
feet which glide upon a thermal
and defenders left in disbelief

Managers go. Migrate with phantoms
of the present on staircases in frames.
Who stops on the turn and sees the lifting?
Silverware and crow’s feet.

People come and go. Hotel rooms,
breakfast, silence in the […]

I can’t remember if around this pitch
kite feathers drift across the scrubland,
but two men with an Alsatian
walk the perimeter, searching.

It isn’t safe for children, this public facility,
with ‘Danger of […]

Within the East Stand’s intemperate tropics,
beneath those apocryphal prawns,
life is measured by flat perspectives.

Managers, akin to former prime ministers
pacing Fife platforms with friendly fire
and oblique […]

Closed books. We simply couldn’t read them.
Open training sessions traced a line of logic
across our columns. It was errant. Non-existent.

The real plan was made behind the double doors
behind the double doors […]

A tour of east coast marine
towns and villages,
flat Lincolnshire fields
and The Wash yields
easily-reached-for names:
Mariners, Pilgrims, odd
ways round to Southwold,
grammatically shot to bits
by Ipswich, […]

No fences are broken here
where none exist
in a suburb of Copenhagen
where Astro-turfs open to everyone.

No paradise, these gardens,
and such high winds that goalposts
lifted, moved with the stones
that pelted […]