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Poems tagged ‘West Ham again’

Claret and blue vintage on Tyneside

joe morris

Tuesday, November 26th, 2024

Finally the spell is broken
The witchcraft no longer present
Claret and blue vintage on
Tyneside
West Ham conquer the Newcastle blues
The drought lifts
The goal scoring famine over
Some of us were expecting
A comprehensive trouncing
The thrashing of a lifetime
Because the decline and fall
In the East End
Seemed to be darkening
Indefinitely
The skies over the London Stadium
Assuming funereal colours
Sepulchral grey
Then dropping into the murkiest pit
Of lonely gravestones of one
Defeat another defeat
But last night on a wintry night
Among the Gallowgate roar
And the Blaydon Races
The black and white stripes
Were flummoxed by a rich bouquet
Of red Hammers wine
West Ham flaring back into life
Once hovering in the dungeons
Of the bottom down and out
Hanging doom and laden
Over the relegation trapdoor
Now where have you seen and
Heard that one before?
Back in the bad old days
of Avram Grant
Who never smiled
None could blame him
West Ham
Tumbling into the Championship
For a while
West Ham stranded and marooned
On a desert island
Far out in a lagoon of woe
Then there was Gianfranco Zola
Genius festooned all over Stamford Bridge
Like a glorious Italian fresco and mosaic
But when Upton Park came calling
Zola became an author of disaster
Now Lopetegui, Spanish
Sweet as yet another bottle of sangria
But now it all appeared sour
Bland, dull, empty and desolate
Pellegrini mark two
Or so they said
But last night Julen pulled
A genie from the lamp
First Tomas Soucek
Our favourite Czech mate
Moved the knight towards
The king
A bullet of a header
From a perfect corner
Opened the Irons account
Then Pacqueta found Jarrod Bowen,
Lucas, we knew you could do it
England’s new kid on the block
Shifted the ball cunningly
Square to onrushing
Aaron Wan Bissaka
Clubbed the ball with a
Laser guided missile
Low shot flies past Pope
The Vatican silenced
Off the post
Victory sealed for our
East End favourites
Now for Arsenal on Saturday
We daren’t go anywhere
Rash predictions
After six of the best
From the firing on
All cylinders Gooners
Last season.
Still, West Ham
Keep the faith
And never give up

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Oh woe West Ham!

joe morris

Sunday, March 31st, 2024

Seven goal thriller
At St James Park
Oh no through closed eyes
Another catastrophe
Leaks through the sieve
Dripping sombrely
Through porous holes
Of West Ham’s fondest
Hopes of another European
Campaign next season
Typical West Ham
It could only happen
To them again
Yesterday the absurdity
Of bonkers scenario
Goals raining down
On our Easter Parade
But then the Hammers
Conform to the usual
Typeface
Just when you thought
It was safe to assume
That maybe, maybe
It could have been
Another pivotal day
When centrifugal forces
Were on their side
Sadly, just horrendous
3-1 up and cruising
When suddenly
The steam roller
In black and white stripes
Flattened claret and blue
Delusions of grandeur
For that is how it seems
Never remotely reminiscent of
Early season
Metronomic rhythms
When firstly Chelsea,
Then Spurs, Manchester United,
Famously at the Emirates
During festive glad tidings
When the Gooners were shocked
By the Hammers
Who must have thought
They were hallucinating
Now the status quo
Is no longer rocking all
Over the Premier League,
Yesterday claret and blue
Seasoned troopers
Bloodied, dazed by four
Fatal blows to the temples
Of their heads
Caught up in the craziest
Plot of them all
Madness in the land of
The Gallowgate revival
Geordie voices
Back at their mellifluous
Best, serenading the Angel
Of the North
Newcastle may be wiping
Disbelieving bliss
From faces of pure
Elation.
Don’t hold them back
David Moyes
Looks away in horror
At the scene of the crime
West Ham fallen from the heights
Eddie Howe temporarily livid
When West Ham scored
From debatable sources
Surely not a free kick
But given nonetheless
Comedy of errors
After the Hammers trio
Of goals when the game
Seemed beyond the reach
Of Tyneside attacking prowess
But then the claret and blue
Brick wall crumbles
Then totally disintegrates
Enough said
End the season now
European football again
Next season
You have to be joking
Hammers
End of pier
Gallows humour
Still resides
Though
We’ll always have
Prague

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Hammers beat the Gooners

joe morris

Thursday, November 2nd, 2023

Now there’s a rarity
Almost as unusual
As the eclipse of the moon
For the first time
Since the outbreak of the
Boer war,
Ladysmith conflict
The Crimean dust up,
Bayeux Tapestry
When Harold met
William the Conqueror
Or the Tudor Stewarts
Fraternised with the
Medieval busybodies
Lost in the mists of time
Since Henry the Eighth
Was a lad in shorts
A stripling and yet
To meet the wives
Who would become his
Innocent victims
But then suddenly
1980 arrived
In all her high tech
Promise and new age
Of splendour
When Maggie made her
First tentative steps
Towards the land of
No turning,
Stubbornness
In a blue power suit
Quite frequently
Thatcherism in
Full domineering watch
Unemployment three million
The full stop of the mining
Industry that perished
With the finality of a
Punctuation mark
Rears head of grotesquerie
Sir Trev stoops to conquer
From Dev’s perfectly weighted cross
Heads he won
Cross at the by line
In 1980 FA Cup Final
Yes we were there
Not within Wembley’s old
Towers
But witnessing from home
While huge waterfalls
Of claret and blue
Cascaded from Wembley Park
Engulfing East End drinking
Hostelries with overwhelming
Delight, West Ham of the old
Second Division downing the
The monarchy of Highbury’s
Marbled halls
But since 1980 nothing of any
Repute or renown
Since then the Falklands
War, yet another comedy
Club of Prime Ministers
The never ending IRA troubles
Finally reaching blissful conclusion
On the Good Friday agreement
But the tables were turned
On that fateful day at the beginning
Of the 1980s
For the first time since
Queen Victoria
Spent her first day
Of surveying her empire
And the commonwealth
Dickens was just a wee lad
In literary thoughts and dishevelled trousers
West Ham winners over the
Gunners cannon fire
Last night, they who
Belonged to the North London regiment
Beaten not quite to a pulp
But Arsenal’s first defeat
Of the Premier League season
In the Alan Hardaker Cup,
Once sponsored by a department
Store or Pools company
Who cared which?
Once the milk of human kindness
The Milk Cup
A bizarre nod
To football’s wholesome calcium
The League Cup in its
Original manifestation
Designed for the lower classes
The downtrodden who always
Struggled against the tides of time
Hard to believe now
But Rochdale and Norwich once
Saw a brief glimpse
Of the League Cup
A fleeting flirtation
With the big time
But then horrific silence
Nothing but Saturdays
Against Torquay and Barrow
And terraces yawning
With battle fatigue
But how we loved the underdogs
The League Cup was their shop
Window of opportunity
But the Hammers beat the Gunners
Last night. Hard to believe
In retrospect
It never happens
If memory serves you correctly
The last time was Vietnam
Since you can still see Nixon’s tears
After Watergate
Saturating the White House
Bobby Moore was in goal
When the Irons were beaten
By the Potteries in
the League Cup semi final
It does seem like a million
Years ago
Stoke overcame the Kensington
Set of now multi millionaires
Chelsea, good old Chelsea
We were so proud to call your name
In the 1972 Alan Hardaker Cup
Splendid Chelsea
The mantra uttered by David Webb,
Ian Hutchinson, the
Stamford Bridge stunners
But not since the English Civil
War, the Wars of the Roses
Or quite possibly the Tudor Stewarts
Were waging private battles
West Ham finally beat Arsenal
You can hear the stevedores
With their metallic grind of steel
Over those East End dockyards
Calling out raucously from the distant past
Rattles and caps in perfect unison
From the diligent factory gate
Ladies and Gentlemen
Miracles do happen
And claret and blue breaks
With precedent
Jarred Bowen, an own goal
And Muhammad Kudus
Sealed the kudos
Victory incarnate
Only the Carabao Cup
Admittedly
But West Ham
Through to the last eight
Still a feather in the cap
In the land of Hardaker’s
Brain child
So many decades
Down the line
But welcome nonetheless
Oh for the joys of the
League Cup.

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Hammers against Gunners.

joe morris

Thursday, September 28th, 2023

Hammers against Gunners
Next round of the Carabao Cup
Lethal combination
Could be combustible
But just good friends over
The North and East London divide
For some of us 1980 FA Cup Final
Same result if possible
But no expectations or sleepless nights
Like the clash of metal or iron
Meeting the bullets of the Arsenal
Gunners
No warfare whatsoever
Just a good natured contest
Who cares?
May the best team win
Quite probably the
Pass masters from the
Emirates
The London Stadium
Awaits
But fear not claret and blue
It’s only a game.

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Hammers in Europe again

joe morris

Friday, September 22nd, 2023

Ah, yet another claret and blue
Odyssey into the land of the unknown
Travelling light
Voyages of discovery
West Ham transported into
Yet more European battlegrounds
Passports officially stamped
Luggage rigorously checked
Last night
The Europa League welcomes
The East End seasoned troopers
Back into the fold
Where Europe’s finest
Exhibitionists
Display their garish finery
The obscure but never
To be taken for granted
Since football, in all
Its cosmopolitan clothing
Still commands respect
In those World Cup history
Books of long ago
Where once Real and Bayern
Placed their carbon footprint
In European football
And of course the Euros
Lest we forget
West Ham though
Back in familiar waters
Re-directing their binoculars
On the Europa League
Agonisingly close against Frankfurt
Before the Germans showed
Their fluid patterns
And supple techniques
Teutonic feet of gold
Hammers knocked out by
Eintracht Frankfurt
In Europa League semi final
But far from shamed
Close but not on that night
Thwarted by a hurdle too far
For West Ham last night
This was a repetition of the
Episode from two seasons back
But entirely different circumstances
Football moves on
And West Ham are worldly and enlightened
They’ve known the peaks and troughs
The peaks of Prague
Where the Hammers won
Czech mate
Bishop and Knight
Found the queen
Drunk on success
Take the castle
Break open the portcullis
And hey presto
The Euro Conference trophy
Was yours to keep
For a while
Fleetingly glorious
Fiorentina flummoxed
By the claret and blue
Technicians
Benrahma strokes home
Penalty before
Lucas with Brazilian
Brilliance
Through the eye of a needle
Slots impeccable through ball
For Jarred to send the Hammers
Into a world of happy ever
After romance and febrile fantasy
Last night Serbia came calling
Backa Topola
Who are they?
Exactly
Certainly not
Accrington Stanley
A million miles away
from the Milans of AC,
And Inter, the indomitable
Bayern Munich, Real Madrid
And Barcelona
But Backa took the lead
With a comedy act of a
Back pass that defied belief
Before Kudus
Moved the mountain Mohammed
Spring heeled header
Level pegging and then again
Before Tomas met with head
From another JWP special
Straight from the deepest quadrant
Corner. 3-1 to the claret and blue
Assembly line of gilded talent
London Stadium thrilled to be here
Among the European sophisticates
Pinching themselves in case
The sceptics pour scorn
On the downtrodden Irons
How far can they go this time?
We shall see
But please remember the bread
And butter of the Premier League
There are no crusts in the
Europa League
So prioritise the home comforts
And another assault on the top 10
West Ham go gently
Into the night
Carefully, cautiously
Liverpool at Anfield
On Sunday, now there’s
A reality check
You fear the worst
Since the gypsy curse
Has always haunted
The Happy Hammers
For decades now
Apart from that one
Chink of light
During the last season
At Upton Park
When Manny Lanzini
And Mark Noble
Stopped the rot
On Merseyside
Oh to be a claret and blue
Loyalist
Neither up nor down
Never a dull moment
When the odds are stacked
Against them
David Moyes delivers
Repeatedly
It certainly can’t be
Denied

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It’s the rumour season again

joe morris

Thursday, July 27th, 2023

Oh for those rumours
Whispers in clandestine
Behind the scenes
Rooms of bleary eyed
Bewilderment
Could somebody enlighten us
This is the moment
Where football jumps
Onto that same bandwagon
The land of conjecture
That unknown destination
Where advanced talks
Drift away on clouds of speculation
It’s the transfer game
Folks. It’s that moment
During the summer when everything
Gets lost in a haze
Of bewilderment
Are you signing him?
Or is he willing to consider
For a million a week
Plus add ons
This time West Ham
Although European winners
Have yet to find anybody
To replace Declan Rice
A catastrophe,
Apocalypse in the
Here and now
Or maybe not
Patience is the essence
Fear not
But there are three
Weeks to go
Before the Premier League
Cranks up its complex machinery
And still
Gaps are yawning
In claret and blue chasms
A sense of desperate yearning
For somebody to replace the
Rice riddle
So far Ward Prowse, Gallagher,
McTominay, Maguire
From United’s Theatre of Dreams
And still we await visits
From neighbouring dignitaries
Declan, now back page history
March forward into uncharted
Territories
Find the perfect alchemy
A chemistry of sodium chloride
That explodes from the London
Stadium Bunsen Burner
Trouble we gather from behind
The scenes, coaches leaving
En masse.
Oh surely not rumblings of
Discontent again
Moyes in splendid isolation
We wonder if anybody
Can be running the show
Off the main stage in the wings
Every summer now
The same discussions, burblings,
Small talk, edging closer
To agreements, then dissenting
Voices.
It sounds just like another
Day at the House of Commons
Or should that be the House of Comedy
More Westminster rather than
West Ham
Corridors, lobbies, tea rooms
Alive with
Knotty negotiations,
More questions than answers
Personally Ward Prowse is
The missing link
If only for his Beckham
Free kick prowess
But Gallagher seems
Like wishful thinking
More Noel and Liam
Than claret and blue
Trophy cabinet rooms
It’s all very hush hush
Secrecy, hidden away
Mysterious goings on
Where nothing concrete
Has been set in stone
The East End public
Should be informed
Since Paqueta, Bowen
And Benrahma are awaiting
Yet more inspiration
To soften the blow of Declan’s
Switch to the Gunners
Cannonades
Irons cloaked in darkness
Not the new faces
Of claret and blue hue
Just a few
Would be welcome
Our European heroes
Might have been expecting
So hold on tight
Jig saw pieces re-discovered
The summer of 2023
But not 42
Mood music
Just a sharp injection
Of new men
Ready for opening day
Strolls along Bournemouth
Prom.
What the faithful would
Give for elusive victory
In this season’s edition
Of the Premier League
Leave the beachside fun
And games
For seaside day trippers
West Ham. Oh
Just a win
Before talks fizzle out
Become history
This is where the season
Begins. West Ham
Be prepared

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Oh, what a night!

joe morris

Thursday, June 8th, 2023

You’d hardly expect me
To be anything but overjoyed
The immediate reaction
West Ham United
More United than ever before
It was Czech mate for Fiorentina
Italian stallions
No longer regarded as such
West Ham
European Conference winners
Now preserve that iconic moment
In golden lettering
On Mount Olympus
Take a sigh or breath for a while
The sweet rhapsodies in claret
And blue,
After 58 years of drought
And famine
Finally rich forests of fruit
And fruition
When most of us felt
That Bobby Moore
Would be the one and only
Even Hammer Chesney Hawkes
Declared his affection
For Thames Ironworks
Men of pride and history
Lifted that elusive trophy
In European heartlands
Where the effervescence in
Our mind and senses
Blew bubbles high into
A Czech night
Of exhausting narratives
Where the warm exuberance
Of youth and experience
And time stood still
But during that decade
That swung
The 1960’s Swinging Sixties
Cliches abounded
For the fatherly and
Amiable Ron Greenwood
Presided over a claret
And blue horizon
1965, what a year
And night that must have been
Where Alan Sealey, Mooro,
Sir Geoff and Martin
Peters sipped a private
Bottle of claret
How appropriate
And then Cup Winners Cup
Winners
Jumped for joy
Cavorting and carousing
Around Wembley’s fair and green
Acres
Now June 2023 in its opening
Scenarios of valour and victory
Where the glint of silver and
Silverware finally lands on
That long neglected trophy cabinet
Rejected by fate for so long
Dusty artefacts of 1965, 1975
And 1980,
Ancient fossils from the neolithic age
Quite possibly
But West Ham crowned Kings of Europe
Well, of a kind
They ridiculed the Conference
As just a conversation piece
But still recognised by UEFA
A trophy, trophy
It almost tastes like
The most perfumed smell
Of the summer rose bush
June blooms
For the Irons
Hammers of the world
Congregate on the podium
Where medals were hung
Over the white and orange
Shirts, who accepted their
Moment of destiny
In much the way their parents
And grandparents
Must have done
When the Beatles conquered
Their domain and the world
Here and now though
West Ham again
Drink from the finest decanter
Declan Rice skipper for the night
Maybe his farewell evening
To the fanatical and devoted
Fans who insisted the England
Man is going nowhere at all
One more year, two more perhaps
Even three or just staying put
Until the enormity of this
Triumph sinks in
The dawning realisation
That there will never be
A night like this in
East End taverns, drinking
Hostelries, very public
Houses where amber nectar
Dreams were born
And yet it wasn’t arresting
Or aesthetically pleasing
On the eye
Just dockyard steel and
And red hot furnaces
But yet the Irons ruled
Over their kingdom, their
Empire in tight little
Back Streets, heaving and
Seething with teeming triumph
Last night Said Benrahma
The revelation of the
London Stadium
This season at least
Against the grim and grimy
Landscape where only the
Smoking pits of desolation
Left an aching void
In West Ham hearts
Now the shipyard workers
And stevedores who once
Plied their trade in
The East London dockyards
For the hard working class
The cloth cap proletariat
Who must have been convinced
The families of future
Generations would never witness
That night, last night
When the Irons came together
Under canopies of shared feeling
And kinship, resonant
Rapport, united by birth
At the voyage of discovery
When you realised
That our ancestors
Who must have thought
They were the torch
Holders on those well
Furnished podiums
When triumphant dreams
Led down well decorated
Avenues in the
1960s moment of moments
Last night momentous
Nights were sparkling
Again, Said’s penalty
Driven home the first Hammer blow
Fantasies blossoming in floral
Profusion, no sharp thorns
And prickly obstacles
In their way
Fiorentina in complete
Charge of proceedings
And yet blunt and lifeless
Up front
Instead vintage Hammers
Improvised in a key of B Major
Muddled and yet industrious
Rolling up the proverbial sleeves
Victory in Europe
What a night
Pacqueta’s sweet as a nut
Slide rule pass
Bowen magnificence again
It was surely in the stars

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Oh what a claret and blue relief

joe morris

Sunday, May 21st, 2023

Oh what a claret and blue relief
You can almost see the puffed cheeks
West Ham safe from relegation
But quite the most horrendous ordeal
We can see quite clearly
From afar but long enough
To appreciate human emotion
In all of its contrasting moods
Cowering behind sofas
It could only be surely
Be the happy Hammers
Agonisingly unbearable, typical
This could only be West Ham
The wince, those twisted facial
Grimaces of Chinese water torture
Pain, anguished knots of barely
Concealed frustration
Lined faces
Permanently worried
All of those wasted responses
In win or lose settings
On trains going home from
The good natured wars
Of Saturday afternoon long
Ago, etched in our thoughts
Why, but who cares now where
Fear and constant nine
Month wear and tear hangs heavy
Over once thriving clatter
Of East End dockyards
But now we think of today
Now disappointment
Then ecstasy floods across
Their furrowed foreheads
Heads lost in a world of
What might have been
It could all have been so different
But today West Ham hit the mythical
40 points of order
On the penultimate game of the season
Home from home victories
At the London Stadium
Sanctuaries of domestic content
Against a side Don Revie
Once described as the best
In the country
The Leeds of Bremner, Giles,
Lorimer, Jones, Clarke, Sprake
At times unstoppable for the
Right reasons
But then attacked by those
Who satirised their best intentions
The cruel mockery of the Saints
When Leeds gourmandised
On seven of the best against
The Southampton skittles
Sent toppling into oblivion
Sadly though for the Elland Road
Grandstanders, now bowed by history
Today Leeds stand on the brink again
The aching void, the perilous precipice
Staring down balefully
At the relegation trapdoor
When they must have thought
The top flight of football’s
High flyers
Would embrace them like long
Lost uncles
Who just wanted to see hello to
Football’s global family
Glad to see you again, we
Were of course delighted
At this reunion
Today Leeds surrendered to
East Enders in no mood
To sympathise with today’s
Back page notables
3-1 to West Ham
Rice, Bowen and Lanzini
Seal the deal
The Foxes await in their
Dark, nocturnal hideaway
West Ham determined
To be crowned at the King Power
Stadium of all stadiums
Leicester also caught up in
The cross hairs of their own
Doom and gloom
But for West Ham it’s safety
From the dreaded drop
Romford, Newham, Forest Gate,
Ilford, Dagenham, Gidea Park and Romford
Suburbia in saturnalia
Let Bacchus drink endlessly
From the finest East End
Grapes of wanton wine
Celebrate with the best
Never rest until
The ultimate test in Prague

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Relegation- again in claret and blue

joe morris

Saturday, April 1st, 2023

You didn’t think it would ever happen
Yet here we are
Just over a decade later
Relegation in claret and blue clothes
West Ham, now cloaked in bleakness,
Darkness in dingy melancholy
Brooding desperately on
Creaking, groaning wooden
Terraces that now drown
Their sorrows
Over leaky corrugated roofs
Rusty turnstiles about to disintegrate
Into the lower depths
Of football’s not so celebrated
Citadels of genius and wealth
Tear stained faithful fans
Now lamenting what might have been
Collapsing in a crumpled heap
In football’s Championship
Fateful forebodings of doom
And gloom, Clouds of calamity
Facing the hapless Hammers
In London Stadium boozy assemblies
Tumbleweed flying across
No man’s land
Relegation again
Yes again
Gallows humour
Destined for the trapdoor
Familiarity breeding contempt
There seems no way out
That same old story
Ineptitude in their claret and blue
Blood cells, bitter gall
In burning throats of hurt
Now you think back to how
It could have been
If only Ron Greenwood had
Stayed for just a while longer
Back in the 1970s
For when England beckoned
Ron answered the call
In due course
And the vibrant life force
At Upton Park seeped
Through our dreams
For Ron had held it together
For well over two decades
West Ham wandering through
The comfortable lands of mediocrity
You were there on the final day
Of the season, facing the firing squad
The Liverpool of Keegan and Toshack
Heighway and Hughes set off the explosives
Along the Chicken Run
A 2-0 defeat and it was relegation
For the first time in ages
The old Second Division for three
Wearisome years, laborious plodding,
Grafting, scraping and scuffling
For crumbs of respectability
But that was never enough
This was the pivotal point when
It all unravelled like a cotton reel
West Ham among the lower downstairs
The ones who may never win
But one day might
We’ve seen it all before
Oldham, Blackburn Rovers, Millwall
And Preston for the claret and blue
Ensemble, it was demeaning, degrading
In the literal sense
Insufferable, unfathomable
Why and how for so long
Then local Ilford boy John Lyall
Arrived after years in youth
Team coach shadows
The manager on the day
When everything flourished
And blossomed on the first
Full flush of Cup Final day
In 1980, Arsenal beaten
At Wembley
Sir Trevor, Alan Devonshire,
Geoff Pike, Alvin Martin
Impassable Billy Bonds
Bonzo, a claret and blue
Brick wall of supremacy
Kings of the Barking Road
Crowned on the throne of
East End, rulers of the roost
West Ham win the FA Cup
But then there were the
Madcap yo yo years
Of the late 1980s, 90s
Trampolining between First
Division, then second
Before the Premiership
And the Premier League
On the day you were married
Bride and bridegroom greet
This gorgeous weekend
Clive Allen taps in
The vital winner against
Cambridge before the flood
Of claret and blue announce
The top flight again
But recently relegation
Bugles blast remorselessly
In our sound and vision
And yet 11 years ago
Sam Allardyce drags the
Hammers back into the Premier League
Full of bluster, bravado, devil may care
No regard perhaps to the subtleties,
Semantics and delicacies of
Football’s lace makers
At Manchester City, Arsenal, United
But West Ham United now clinging
On for dear life
In the most elite company
Claret and blue class
Of today’s product
Staring down the bottom of
The barrel
That guillotine chop
Send them down, Hammers
Sentenced to Championship when all seemed so rosy
Oh, wistful yearnings for
How it might have been
Had Ron Greenwood stamped
His intellectual footballing
Mark on the West Ham academy
It may have delayed the
Agony for a year or two
Still, who knows
Stranger things have been known
To happen
It may go to the wire
The final day
But doubts are understandable
Relegation now
Just a matter of time
Now a claret and blue
Engraving that lost its shine
Oh if only West Ham
Could find another Ron and John
Greenwood and Lyall
It just seems like a compatible
Combination
Two peas in a pod
It’s time to face the music
West Ham, we hope again
Please finish in 16th
And win the Euro Conference
Wishful thinking
But you never know

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Leyton Orient

joe morris

Saturday, October 22nd, 2022

We always had a soft spot for
Leyton Orient
Claret and blue neighbours
Do come in for an amiable chat
Banter over the garden fence
West Ham and Leyton Orient
Derby by close proximity
But always with plenty
Of time for each other
Sit down please
Make yourself at home
And away
You’re more than welcome
Hospitable hosts
But the Os were never on the
Same page and chapter as
Us
Sadly, although once divisions
Apart, still buddies and allies
Fate and destiny
Just unfairly conspiring
To keep claret and blue
At arms length from each other
The Os red and white
Army from Brisbane Road
Where once you witnessed
Your introduction to the
Beautiful Game
The initiation ceremony
The first day at school
Even now on reflection
You can still hear the
Frantic stamping
The polite and genteel
East End roars
The Brisbane Road
Choirs drifting from
The highest steeple
From the five or six
Thousands
Gently pulsing
There goes the young
And deeply missed
Laurie Cunningham
Lightning fast, lithe
Athleticism in every
Darting, probing run
Even then a breathtaking
Nugget of gold,
The complete article
Bill Roffey,
Derek Possee,
Gerry Queen
Knights in shining armour
Dignity and chivalry
In their blood and
Presentation
But Leyton Orient
Were always beneath
Us, never intentionally
You understand
We longed for equality
With you
But you were never there
And yet for a couple of seasons
At the end of the 1970s
Our paths did cross
Quite romantically
When least expected
Your thoughts turn to
A Boxing Day meeting
Of great minds
Thinking alike
West Ham still haunted
By eight goal thumping
In 1963 by Blackburn
But this was Leyton Orient
Our friendly relations
From around the corner to us
Springing a shock, an unexpected
Bolt from the claret and blue
Taking an astonishing lead
Against the happy Hammers
Upton Park reduced to library
Silence, please
Some of us are trying to read
Then Boxing Day lost all of its
Festive lustre
When John Chiedozie
Or was it Laurie Cunningham?
Barely out of their childhood
Games of footloose exuberance
Sprinted the length of the pitch
Hurtled towards Mervyn Day
Before slotting home the second
Goal and decisive winner
The tectonic plates shifted
Alarmingly at that moment
A red and white revolution
What a cheek, the audacity
Of it all
West Ham against Leyton Orient
Or simply Orient way back then
A local derby perhaps
But never any malice or animosity
Geographical rivals
Perhaps
But never Arsenal against Spurs
Liverpool against Everton
United pitting their wits against
City, Manchester style
Just contrasting fortunes
Never in the same place
As each other or time
But the Hammers were aware
Of your good deeds
And benevolent face
On the rest of the world
In the same neighbourhood
But never quite on
Level playing grounds
Playing your games
Spiced with goodness
Correctness
Even though you were in
The old Second, Third Division
Fourth Division and then
Briefly, thankfully the non- League
Orient, West Ham we salute you
Leyton Orient, hugely respected
And respectable
Our comrades and
Kindred spirits
But Boxing Day 1978
Or it may have been
The year before
Deserving winners, but
It was a shock to our system
We’re just glad you’re here.

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Source: http://footballpoets.org/news/poem-tags/west-ham-again/