Football Poets

What has happened to the football game?
The ones that I’m watching just aren’t the same.
No diving, no crowding.
No pulling, no tripping
Is this a sign that standards are slipping?
No in-the-face challenges
To the […]

Fixed stare at the TV screen
No football action to be seen
Cricket-yes, tennis-yes
But football’s gone
My life’s a mess.
Three months now to wait for action
The sport that gives me satisfaction
Withdrawal sym […]

The neglected pitch is dry and rough
The goalposts taken down
An abandoned ball all scuffed and grubby
And the side-paths overgrown.
Bleak, unloved and empty
The ground no longer used
Nothing left to shout for
To […]

Yesterday thePremiership
Was like the Dead Sea
(With two rocks on the bed
That are QPR & Burnley)
But everyone else floats

Today that sea will change
To the wild Atlantic
Where two journeys
Will toss and […]

It so often begins in childhood
going with your dad, collecting autographs
in teenage years you go with mates
eating pies and drinking halves

Then you meet your missus
and find the grass isn’t greener
It just […]

Life is the challenge
Football is the game
After Heyssel, Hillsborough, Bradford
We’ll never be the same

For our last game
I got up in the cold light of the South Midlands
Well insulated from reality
And made the long pilgrimage to Deepdale.
Walking through the town that late morning
I encountered my life again (or […]

When your team scores, it’s amazing
We all know that surge of feeling
When Ipswich equalised against us
A fan punched right through his ceiling

He tweeted to show the damage by his fist
He could see the funny […]

“The fire spread
faster than a man can run” –
faster than John Hendrie chasing the through ball
faster than his tracking defender
faster than the lino
faster than the ref
faster than the supporting midfi […]

“the whole stand is on fire” he cried upon my radio
but how it started to this day we still may never know
and who here can imagine the fear the heat the pain
but pray that such a day as this will never dawn […]

you in those long shorts
on scrapbook pages and walls
always my hero

•

to ape your swivel
on concrete fields by street light
how I tried and tried

•

blurred in blue and white
you dancing past def […]

I always wanted to be Jimmy Greaves
it wasn’t the pace the shimmy or the flair
or even those baggy shorts to die for
it was the goals
and in my scrapbook with flour for glue
all those first cuttings were of ‘ […]

Swans, Tigers, Canaries
And as I’m often away with the Fairies
I never saw the ostrich coming

Bantams, Magpies, Foxes
But where we tick the boxes
Not a sign of an ostrich

Robins, Wolves and Stags
To players, f […]

Like a vast expanse of deserted beach
where the tide has tip-toed out
and left behind the glinting rock pools
full of creatures, darting for shelter
where shrimps, crabs and sticklebacks
fight for refuge in the […]

Not Sherwood FOREST

Nor Lincoln GREEN,

But FOREST GREEN;

Not Robin Hood and Little John,

But Dale Vince and David Drew;

Not outlaws and poachers,

But left-wingers and goal poachers;

Not the pollution of […]

My seat was down the front, right by the pitch,

With a view right out to open fields, new leaf trees,

Scudding clouds, a grand sky horizon, and two billboards

That tried to send their message down to the New […]

my mate Rob don’t like to talk about it
not because he’s wiped it from his mind
when he woke he remembered nothing
of that dark and awful tragic time

my mate Rob don’t like to blame nobody
he’s just glad to be h […]

Today is Easter Monday
I’m sitting on a bus
There’s a girl on the next seat singing
I don’t want to make a fuss.
I wonder what she’d think of me
If I sang Dulwich Hamlet songs out loud
Rather than her […]

It’s like going to a circus
Doing the same thing every week
You’re wonderfully ‘new-veau’
Sorry I can’t turn the other cheek.
I’m not saying we should boo
Or jump on the players’ back
But all our loyal chants must […]

Time has passed
But 96 haven’t

They twisted and turned on the day
But never since could they watch

Or play