Football Poets

The Beautiful Game is a wonderful life
Gives us moments of joy wrapped in parcels of strife
The goals and the saves and the less and the more
The crosses and losses the wins and the draws
The badly behaved […]

200 souls in the pouring rain
Week in week out all here the same
Not for glory or the glimmer of fame
Grassroots for me not gravy train

Print match programme the odd refrain
22 footballers taking the […]

Shankly making the people happy
Mooro pristine in his tackles and kit
Banks of England with his safe pair of hands
Chippy Brady darting over the pitch
Adams as stoical as the house made of bricks
Football to […]

In the boots of a striker
The bliss of a kiss
The quiet of a heron
Pursuing a fish

Upstream and sparkling
Where the wild salmon dart
But most of all

Through the aching capillaries
Of my lost childhood’s heart.

You didn’t play football
On the grass of Strawberry Fields
You didn’t wear a red or blue scarf
You didn’t strain yer neck trying to watch
The game from the Kop at Anfield or
The street end at them there Blues […]

The toes of a dancer
The swish of a kiss
The splash of red ketchup
On lush fish and chips

Upstream and sparkling
Where the wild salmon dart
But most of all

Liverpool Football Club
The place in my heart.

Mi Scuse but I’m potty
For the charm of Ancelotti
Tho his chosen club of blue
Is not my mighty bold red hue.

No prima donna’s neon boots
No glitzy goalie aches to shoot
A sloping pitch a non-league dog
A Poem A Pie and A Pint of grog

Dogged defenders who stay the course
Strikers with the pace of Inspector M […]

The glory of football
In the matches we love
The breath-taking goals
The tip of the glove

But a club is a body
Of myriad parts
The backroom the boot room
Not just its stars

The steel of the […]

play the game
for love
not for glory
or gain

tackle with dignity
the obstacles and
traps and tropes
and the winning goal

that no one saw you score
will be seen.

As children we gladly troop along
And follow the piper’s thrilling throng
Enthralled bewitched by the green of the pitch
The banners flags and aye the songs
As teens we slowly drift and stroll
To fall in l […]

Match-day programmes
Old skool fanzines
A standing terrace
The stuff of dreams
A pie & a pint
Tales of away
Like me my old trabs
Have seen better days
But Saturday’s youth
These seasons have grown […]

Going to the game with a hand wash and mask
Swapping the Bovril and hot tea in a flask
Co-Vid volunteers with precision they zoom
The clubhouse is spotless elbow grease and broom
Aye it feels different but […]

I dreamt last night that Shakespeare’s Ghost
Went for an English teaching post
The English paper for that year
Had several questions on King Lear
But Shakespeare answered less than three
Too bad he failed G […]

The grassroots game is bleeding
And supporters sick of pleading
After 5 months end begin
Now #Let FansIn

The non league supporter knows
All too well the plans proposed
But let common sense this day […]

At last
As a saggy baggy auld arse
I get the chance for headline dreams
My name in lights on a Liverpool shirt
After all these years
From the wastelands of playgrounds
The silent parks that held my […]