Football Poets

Spare a thought

So spare a sorrowful thought
For the team and teams
Drifting helplessly near trickling
Streams, washed up
Hurt and wounded too
Like the careworn shoe
At the bottom of the Football League
Wandering the streets of anonymity
Oh what pity
Like the loneliest of cats
Seeking comforting mats
Loitering in the draughty doorways
In the cold, isolated, distant bays
Of heartbroken souls
England’s northernmost folds
Blue as the flickering lights
Down in the darkness
Of desperate nights
The guttering wax from a
Birthday candle from our youth
Like the childhood tooth
Now blown and flown away
Oh, Morecambe bottom of the
Football League pile
It used to be about style
Probably relegated into some
Pitiful corner of our minds
Time rewinds
Buried among the debris
Of their ravaged and savaged hopes
Morecambe returning to non League obscurity
Where briefly lived stability
Neutral football supporters
Weeping buckets
Unloved by the sharp
Poisoned pen letters
Of their so called betters
Of the cynics, the wicked
Snide, sniggering comments
Morecambe who used to
Be among the silent underworld
Of non League mediocrity
Now back among the nobody
The nowhere in particular
A thousand years away
Perhaps from the kings
and crowned heads
Of the Premier League
A penny for thoughts
Of those who adored
The man who always brought us sunshine
Now immortalised in Morecambe
In all his marble splendour
Dearly beloved
The joyous skip and leap
Into the air
Morecambe, rather like
A neglected, ramshackle
Old building near
The Golden Mile in nearby
Blackpool
Nobody cares for Morecambe
When the going got really tough
Once strutted their funky stuff
Like a grubby raincoat
From yesteryear
Full of wear and tear
Now gathering dust
Only crust and now bust
In dusty attics
Next to muddled puddles
At three on Saturday
The pain that never
Went away,
Where now resides the strain
There never seemed any gain
Near Morecambe’s aching, flaking pier
The baleful stare
Life drained and now stained
Every page of their season
Just deserted them without reason
Bottom of the Football League
With only Carlisle, Newport County
And Accrington Stanley
For company,
Oh no, not again
This is the time when
Rock bottom of the Football League
It can be cruel and unforgiving
Football can leave you shivering
But maybe one day once again
We’ll always be in the top ten

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We’ll be back…

It’s annoying… but Keiron from Rochdale was right;
a 2-1 loss to the boys from the Fylde
and our hopes of survival
were put out of sight.
They say it’s the size of the fight in the dog,
Not the size of the dog in the fight…
but I think we all knew – us white and blue –
that we’d got to the end of the night.
But there’s something that Keiron
did never quite get,
When he tweeted: ‘enjoy relegation’..
We always did know we were ‘punching’;
That these thoughts were ‘above our station’.
But we come up National to have some fun,
Be glad of a run,
a chance for a dance
on our day in the sun,
and we might well have dreamed
when the season begun,
but what harm in such contemplation?
This ‘phoenix from ashes’ club that we are?
Who wouldn’t succumb to temptation?
To dream?
And maybe believe?
But that is the lot of the football fan.
As you are, Keiron – you beautiful man.
And good luck for your own elevation.
But for now, let us see out these final games,
Our last little taste, of our highest yet place
In this glorious chase
for… salvation?
No, that’s going too far….
Ah…. ‘Realisation’.
As in; attainment; achievement; success;
Because, if nothing less,
At least we have shown those park playing teams
in those Sunday leagues
What can be achieved
With a little belief
And no real money (to say the least).
That… that is our real donation
To this game.
But only for now,
Cos we’re just parking the bus,
And although we’re off down to the National South
(or the North, we don’t know, but we’ll figure it out)
We’ve had a wee taste of what it’s about,
And we’ve enjoyed its sweet sensation.
Football – like life – has its ups and downs,
It’s choppy waters, it’s shocks;
But just like Oxford’s Rowing Crew
We’ll always have our Cox.
So it’s going to be a ‘goodbye for now’.
An ‘au revoir’, if you like,
An ‘hasta luego’,
A ‘til next time’….
All of which means, Keiron,
‘Hold my beer’;
Cos that’s the thing about dreams.
They persist.
They persevere.
They endure.
And what, my good friend,
could be any more pure?
So all you Hoops,
Take heart…
Cos in a way, this is only the start.
The start of our fight to return,
To what has been earned
Through blood, sweat and tears,
In over a hundred and forty one years.
So in fact, not just mine, Keiron…
Hold all of our beers.
We’ll all meet again soon.
And we’ll cheers.

#rowanthepoem

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Goin’ Down, Goin’ Down

Too good to go down,
too bad to stay up, and
mid table mediocrity,
isn’t for the likes of us.

Lost the dressing room,
thrown away the plot,
our misfiring forwards,
cock up (almost) every shot.

Catalogue of errors,
litany of defeats,
run out of road,
we’re dead on our feet.

A vow to return,
beat our retreat,
playoffs or automatic,
to climb up the tree.

Get back to the elite,
loose our best,
fail to compete,
rinse and repeat.

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Wishful Thinking

you can park your bus in our midfield
drive a tractor through our defence
slalom freely our wide-open flanks
test our goalkeeper’s positional sense

we’ve failed to replace our ageing stars
our recruitment policy is a farce
so-called tactics have lost the plot, and
our corridor of uncertainty runs box to box

we’re rubbish and we know it, but
we’ll still be here a year from now
there’re three teams worse than we are
who deserve to go down

trouble is every time we say those words
they come with a growing sense of doubt

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