Football Poets

When you climb 2000 feet over Offa’s Dyke,
And the western clouds at last make way for the sun,
And hill after hill opens up with new distances
With each new ridge reached,
And vistas of heather, cotton grass a […]

My best mate’s dad was at Tobruk in 1942,
My dad happened to be there too,
They both bore arms, but not as brothers,
In fact, they were trying to kill each other,
Heinrich Hoffman with his gun,
And my dad, Rod, i […]

Private water companies
Are supposed to be pragmatic utilities
Rather than aquatic futilities,
But like lambs to the slaughter
We buy all this bottled mineral water
And so why then do we do it?
Isn’t it snobbery t […]

Claudio Ranieri’s
Football philosophies
Spring from an artesian
Well being Cartesian,
For unlike Jaap Staam,
“I tink therefoe I am.”

He was a working class boy from Camberley,
Did well at school and went to university,
To study for a lucrative career
As a mechanical engineer;
He travelled down the M4 corridor,
Researching west of Heathrow’s e […]

It just goes to show
That when you don’t know
Something, it’s good to ask
Rather than bask
In blissful ignorance.
For instance,
When I got on the train at Bristol,
And sat opposite a suave, tall
Young man with wir […]

Is it winter or is it spring?
Late winter, early spring,
Time seems all mixed up these days, doesn’t it?
Whether it’s vernal hibernation,
Or a precocious aestivation,
There doesn’t seem to be a winter these days, […]

If Zenden heard a call
To play football
For Millwall,
Then
Would there be Zen
At the Den
Or
Would Zenden
Play it like
Dirty Den?

By Janus,
There’s a world of difference between turning the other cheek
And choosing to look the other way,
Don’t you agree?
For the one means engagement, sympathy, empathy and compassion,
The other means a wil […]

Lost in the British Museum;
Hung-over;
Drowning in a sea of knowledge,
Clutching at antiquities from across the world,
Windblown by classification,
Wave tossed by categorisation,
Run aground on […]

It was a grey sky winter solstice late afternoon,
When our train stopped at Kemble,
And a fashionable young man got on,
With an old fashioned football scarf
Knotted around his neck,
Alternate horizontal bars of […]

It’s a difficult month, November,
Sometimes so still and so breathless,
With the silent air condensing at sunset,
With mists swirling in the hillside hollows,
Vapours drifting round the churchyard g […]

On the Friday night, I went to a Mods’ reunion,
Where Zoot Money sang “Barefootin”,
The ideal preparation for the next day’s journey
To commemorate the life of a man
Whose childhood would have been similar […]

When I was a kid,
Sitting with my grannie by the fireside back in 1956,
She used to tell me how the smouldering bits of soot,
Glowing on the fire-back, were really old soldiers,
“They never die, Stuart, they o […]

It was like having two enemies,
The Boche and me own side,
But at least Jerry didn’t pick just on me,
Or treat me any differently from any other Tommy,
Jerry just tried to kill us all fair and square –
But my mat […]

It was impossible to forget the historic links between America
And this old “Atlantic Archipelago”,
When meeting in Royal Parade in Regency Cheltenham,
Just below the hills where a disconsolate George the 3rd tal […]

A Poetic and Philosophicalle Disputation about the Essence of Swindonne’s midfield:

If I go how can Sammy?
And if Sammy goes how can I?
Paradox reconciled
By Renee Descartes with a smile,
“Igoe therefore I’m Sam.”

I love those late September afternoons,
When a Sunday sun sinks westward,
With those golden geometric bars
Slanting out from a darkening cloudscape;
And I love it when a storm of conkers comes crashing down
As […]

I’m sitting in the Shed writing this,
No, not Chelsea, but Porthgain,
The Shed Café and Bistro,
Complete with uncool definite article,
And a very nice cream tea,
(Though not for you Jardel)
In Porthgain, Pe […]

You know what holidays are like,
They’re just like a new football season,
The expectation nearly always exceeds the actuality,
And appearances are so very often deceptive;
And so it was this year, on the C […]