Football Poets

You stand quietly just away from the shadows
The red of your scarf catches the light
And draws it down
And those football eyes shine
Unscramble the mysticism of tactics
Each lunge measured
Each trailing leg […]

Monsieur Houllier
That Treble had us dancing
Dortmund, Cardiff, home.

Bootroom Bard for football seasons
Now that’s the job for me
In praise of Bob and Liverpool
Of all things Bill Shankly

A job well Donne the chants declare
For Dalglish rules supreme
A Prince among the t […]

We all got ‘megged by Covid
No more football games from March
All that zoom and online rooms
The future seemed so sparse
 
So, stacked on teams the world it seemed
All quiet and slowed right down
Our he […]

Pantomime villains
Saints and sinners
Football has them all

Be blessed with God-given gifts
Upon that football pitch
You’re forgiven all the more

But should your boots have trace of clay
The l […]

Diego the man
Returns to the
Silent earth

Maradona the footballer
Plays on
Thunderous immortality.

Maradona takes his rest
Heaven’s 11
With George Best.

* * *

I loved you
Even tho others
Said you were
A ‘cheat’
I loved you
For your genius
Wild and unpredictable
Making up then breaking
All the rules
And you were
Who I was, always,
Playing football
On that […]

The genius of Maradona
In those god-given toes
that mane of untamed curls
and the knowing hand
that could not steal the beauty
of that second goal.

Once upon a silent terrace
The trainers in the box forlorn
But football just like love returns
We go again, we dream again for sure

Once upon a silent terrace
The scent of Bovril disappears
But football […]

Pride of Padiham in the groove
A poem pie and pint
Aye goals sublime and tricky moves
And Daz O on the mic!

The boys in blue they do their best
To make themselves a name
They give their all and make us […]

In the year of Our Lord 1914
The call came for lads to join up with a team
So they packed up their boots with their hopes and dreams
And they offered their hearts for the price of a shilling
For the crown […]

Tonight
The turnstile will close
The whistle will be silenced
The watch will stop
The cards packed away
The boots that clashed sheathed
And the tackles shackled from the heat
of battle
We will step off […]

One name resonates
Diego Maradona
Football poetry.

Nobby Stiles
In white and red
Jigged with Jules Rimet
Not a tooth in his head!

Through the summers long gone and the winters to be
The songs that were sung by my old friends and me
So, what of the glorious days of the past
The nights that we lost and those that we danced
Dressed up with […]

From Huddersfield
Driving down in an Austin A40
No palms were thrown at his feet
No sweet Hosannas filled the skies
No heralds announced the saviour’s arrival
And beneath Liverpool’s sullen grey skies
He wal […]

The chapter and verse who beguiled and dazzled
With the smooth seduction of a million, million hearts
Beating to the rhythm of the beautiful soul
Whilst defences fell like discarded notes
From a trembling […]

Are you hangin’ up your trophies on the wall?
Are you watchin’ Salah mesmerise the ball?
The boot room days are over
And things not quite the same
But 3 European Cups still bear your name
What secrets did you […]

Football is as much geography as physiology
the pitch the very landscape of conjecture
its borders collect around the ground
tendered, watered, and cultivated
cajoled into imagined emerald grass
for molten […]