Football Poets

We must have numbered a football team,
Umbrellas unfurled at the cenotaph,
Where we spoke of Walter Tull and Spurs,
And Swindon Town and Northampton Town
Footballers who fell in the Great War –
The rain p […]

When all seems stocked against you
And the future aye looks bleak
The road at times seems way too long
The mountains sure too steep
Hope ‘gainst hope and pull on boots
Walk on walk on so bold
Play on f […]

Can a Fox cry, one did today?
Five lives tragically taken away.
A crying Fox is something new.
I shed a tear alongside him too.

As a red I cheered your fairy tale.
Brilliant to see the top dogs […]

‘Who’ll hear the orphan’s cry?
‘They’re full of fear and dread’
We took our team on the road
To play football with them instead

Haji Eusuf orphanage, Chattak
We met 53 orphans that day
Zoinul and Moshahi […]

Out on the football fields
Williams finds her true home
The record-breaking golden girl
With the world of the ball at her feet
Instrumental play-maker weaving and teasing
Those big game changing […]

I will tell you there is the God
The names close to him
tell me that

But to be down to earth
I need the friends

I find my friends in the words

Some love a football club
and two more things

The […]

The number of years is a mathematical fact
Everything the minds of people can know

The years of the past football games
can’t be anything but the past football years

The football events are the part of […]

Football Poetry
The goals the songs the heartbreaks
Cabbages and kings.

Man of blood
Not impenetrable stone
Who gathered genius
Like fish in a net
Hewn from the same Scottish rock
Of Stein and Shankly
Game changer supreme
Father figure whose beloved sons
Perished in the cruel […]

When I was in high school all those years ago
In English I was taught Keats’ “Ode To A Grecian Urn”
And whilst I loved this bright star’s resilient rebellion
Not one single word other than those in the title d […]

The Accrington Stanley fan got excited
when his team did score,
he jumped wildly in the air
as fellow supporters let out a roar.
His team were beating AFC Wimbledon
and they finally won 2-1,
but when he got […]

still swapping shirts with Willie the Shake
taught us words can make the heart ache
showed us life is just a stage
where we run and strive and guage
this Peoples’ Game that carries on
until the day that we […]

eighteen years of verse
sixteen thousand five hundred
poems on football

I for one will miss

paper tickets for the match

when they scan my eyes

Half as nice
As watching Eden scoring thrice
Who needs paradise?
Seeing Eden net thrice?

Peace.

oh the sordid satire of screaming sinew!
and the blistering bantz of boots belying “buy new”

We see and yet don’t comprehend
how the ability to defend
successfully stymies
all the style and substance
of the natural artists;

They, with extravagant brushstrokes
wish only to depict the valiant and v […]