Football Poets

Not Sherwood FOREST

Nor Lincoln GREEN,

But FOREST GREEN;

Not Robin Hood and Little John,

But Dale Vince and David Drew;

Not outlaws and poachers,

But left-wingers and goal poachers;

Not the pollution of […]

My seat was down the front, right by the pitch,

With a view right out to open fields, new leaf trees,

Scudding clouds, a grand sky horizon, and two billboards

That tried to send their message down to the New […]

Forest Green was, as historian Tim Barnard comments:

‘A staunchly Non Conformist village,

made up of Baptists and Congregationalists’ –

Although the club was based at a pub,

‘The Jovial Forester … Lower F […]

Immaculate in spotless cricket whites,
Keeping wicket on the village green,
Up past Slad’s crossroad war memorial,
Betwixt Purgatory and Paradise,
To where 7323 Private Edward Hogg’s name
(7th Battalion, Glo […]

When War broke out, the British public cried
“We’ll be in Berlin by Christmas”. But
By Christmas hundreds of thousands had died,
As Mons, The Marne, Ypres and Messine cut
Down the youth of Europe, while Fland […]

It’s a bit Herbert Marcuse,

A bit One Dimensional Man:

A unification of opposites,

A harmonisation of contradictions,

Where liberal-democratic capitalism

Gives that tantalising illusion of freedom,

Whilst […]

It wasn’t, in fact, a bolt from the blue,

Instead the 1914 Truce was part of a pattern,

That both preceded that Christmas and continued beyond:

There were ‘cushy’ sectors, involving ‘lais […]

When you’ve been out ‘ere as long as I ‘ave,

You get to know the ropes and have a laugh,

Keep’ yer ‘ead down aint enough for Fritz,

You’ve got to show you can live and let live.

When Fritz has his breakfast, […]

Midsummer Night’s Dream:
I wake up to a nightmare,
England are Bottom.

Board game metaphor:
The name’s Monopoly now,
Not Subbuteo.

There was, of course, more than one football match
In the long line of unofficial truces
That stretched all along the front in Flanders;
Indeed, the matches themselves were a sort of climax,
Punctuating the peace […]

The Beautiful Game
Gave freedom-fighters respite
In freedom’s struggle.

Apartheid’s victims,
In Robben Island’s prison
Played the Peoples’ Game.

It was an escape,
But also an expression:
The need for new r […]

18th Century Rural Direct Action
versus 19th Century Industrial Capitalism

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

A normal feature of my teenage years

Was hours spent queuing for football tickets,

But this autumn’s trip down memory l […]

I think the love for a football team
Transcends the oft quoted tribal loyalty,
And involves, instead, individuality,
Something subliminal within the personality –
For it’s all about the dreaded mortality:

On t […]

You called on Christmas Eve afternoon,
Carrying an unwrapped parcel,
A gift brought from memory lane:
David Dangerfield’s dad’s football boots,
Slightly battered but proud and dubbined,
Though still smeared wit […]

Haiku for Nympsfield War Memorial

As I write these lines,
The young men of the village
Arrive for the match.

Nympsfield village,
Catholic sanctuary,
High-up on the wolds.

And at the cross-roads,
A […]

Steam trains whistling through the night,
Wagons buffering up in the marshalling yards,
The milk man with his early morning horse and cart,
‘Papers and comics land with a thwack in the hall;
Eggs, bacon, tea and t […]

It was déjà vu all over again,
But with a football boot in the present:
Trains full of fans but without the toilet rolls;
A minibus of men but stone cold sober;
One woman in a pub – reading a kindle;
Swindon r […]

Wordsworth grew up fostered alike by beauty and by fear,
I grew up on trains, football, politics and beer:
“No platform for Fascists” was the cry
And “Swindon until I die”;
Now the steam is locked in a museum, […]

I am going on the march on Saturday,
And not watching football because
“It’s the same the whole world over,
It’s the poor wot gets the blame,
It’s the rich wot gets the pleasure
Aint it all a crying shame”: […]