Football Poets

So off we go to the capital city,
Sons and daughters of steam,
Sons and daughters of the plough,
Along the permanent way;
First, a pilgrimage to St. Mary’s, Putney,
Scene of the 1647 Putney Debates,
“I think tha […]

A disorder
That gives a supporter
Order
In a disordered world.

“What’s the difference”,
They muse,
“Between a fan
And a fanatic?”
“Is it 2 syllables
Or 4 pints?”

Some clubs are big.
Some clubs are not big.
Some clubs are really big.
They are really big clubs.
They are bigger than big clubs.
Big clubs are bigger than small clubs.
Being small is not being big.
That is […]

Once it was,
Sitting by the fireside,
Specs on the end of the nose,
Pencil poised,
Glancing at the form guide,
X’s carefully marked,
A hopeful moment,
In a humdrum week,
A studied departure
From the usual t […]

So, Here We Go, again, then.
Packing up our troubles in our old kit bag,
Railway cuttings, Robins and old programmes,
Photos of mum and dad and Fliss and Keith and me,
All tied up in a bag on the end of a […]

Compulsion. Learned compulsion.
Peer-group imitation. Addiction.
Superstition. Repetition. Identification.
Inheritance through family.
Sense of community. Unity
Past, Present and Future as an epiphany.
The team is […]

Just like Pip we hope to climb the social ladder,
Saying goodbye to old Joe Gargery,
Aspiring to Estelle, no wag in the crowd, she,
Hoping that Miss Havisham will be our benefactor.
But Magwitch and Joe the […]

It’s more than my Wordsworth,
To tell you, my good friend Crispi,
How a poet should run Chelski,
But if you are going to be a big Spender,
Make sure the Pound Burns no hole in your pocket.
Do not put Coleridge a […]

Snowdrops on a rain-swollen riverbank,
Primrose by a canal lock, shady and dank,
A thrush taps gainst its mirrored reflection –
The message is clear for the footballing nation:
The narcissus of spring, bright y […]

Digging down deep, a trench for spuds, not warfare,
I catch a glint of subterranean sunlight,
A signal from the past, from somewhere
Far beyond sight, mortality, skin and bone,
A piece of flint, there amongst the […]

Who was it who thought that 1 piece of string betwixt 2 sticks,
Could measure a line even truer and straighter
If wrapped around 2 steel spikes,
Revolving loose and louche,
As you walk across your allotment […]

The signal is clear,
Battle of the Railwaymen,
They will share the points.

Sing sweet avians,
Red Robins in the Forest,
Soaring on the wing.

Rolled-sleeve, break-back, pounding chest,
Up here, just below Butterow West;
Where I dig and plant and study and sow,
While neighbours wander to and fro,
Past rusting barrows, ramshackle sheds,
Oil drums, baths […]

Laughing and jolly,
The wally with the brolly,
Golly, what folly.

Hear Galileo,
Willie Carr and Ernie Hunt
All swear, “It still moves.”

Along Brunel’s iron road
Where engines once glowed
On the Great Western Railway;
Where rustics in The Load of Hay
Make their unkempt way to Rotherhithe
For the chance of work and a life
Of toil, behind the w […]

Sucking his bottle,
When fortune turns against him,
He yearns for his mum.

Work differs from play
As the dark night does from day:
Give us back our game.

We’re good friends together,
Graham and me,
But that wasn’t the case
Back in 1973,
When I was on the railways,
Climbing a signal box with a billy-can,
To be told by the signalman
That Ian Porterfield had just sco […]