Football Poets

How to lose the fans
From the very very start
Drop all the young guns
And pick those without a heart

How to lose the fans
And tear our club apart
Don’t you dare, don’t you DARE
Force the juvenescent to depart

“It’s so hard being in love, eh?”

I’m used to shocks….
FA Cup exits to minnows
League Cup Final defeats
Stevie G’s slip
World Cup non-qualification (when “the Clown” came to town)
England losing to Finla […]

Diego does go
Full of flair and flamboyance
Flawed yet feted

That cheeky toothless grin
That enormous will to win
Was the foundation stone

That famous jaunty jig
That doughty heart so big
Made the German’s groan

But United we stand
All (virtually) hand in h […]

Inspired by “The Wind” by RLS Robert Louis Stevenson
& by the anthem of Gerry & The Pacemakers

I saw you tear apart each team
To keep alive your burning dream;
And all around I heard such praise
In your que […]

Notes on a summer’s eve jog, during the pandemic

they all look on…
the raucous rooks rollick:
“hey porky, you’re too unfit”
the jiggedy jackdaw japes:
“you’re too infirm”
the swooping swifts swipe: […]

Can we do it?
Yes we can!
And we did
We went out and we played our matches
Bettered the opposition when we could
And enjoyed sporting contests
With fluent football to the fore.

But now we regrettably […]

there’s an eerie silence as I head off to bed –
the silence is natural
for I’m always the last to settle

but there’s a sense of devastation that permeates the corridors
a sense of damnation and enforce […]

Like a gnarled old hand, the spindly tree spread out above me
Stooped over the country lane
Its silhouetted fingers, tickling the hedge-hemmed curious calves

Lying in wait somewhere, hidden and camouflaged […]

If I wasn’t Ossie for the day
Then I’d be the Cat
For he was our hero
And that was that

All over the goalbox
He’d leap and spring
“There’s only one Peter Bonetti”
Oh, how the Shed would sing

And now […]

The nest-builders are as busy as ever….
a delightfully dappled thrush appears at one of my garden pots
checks surreptitiously for danger
instinctively knows I am fastened behind the bars, of toughened g […]

Usually, it’s an acerbic reaction
An emphatic ‘bothered’ and ‘bemoaned’
Whence learning of:
“All matches postponed”

But this time around
We nod and agree when it’s intoned
For containment of […]

I watched the first half live last night
then I switched off
for I guessed what would follow:
lauded team of Albion, one down to an early, fluky goal
a team unquenchable in the domestic league
but up against […]

I crossed over the road from the undertakers
walked in through the park gate
and there it was:
my old pitch, bathed in beautiful sun
still there
still marked, still in obvious use
And I remembered back
to […]