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A Wednesday Night in Walsall, 1980

kevin raymond

Tuesday, October 31st, 2006

1 Leave a comment on verse 1 0 You’re stuck in the middle
In the arse (nal) end of nowhere
Rain aboves tipping down on your head

2 Leave a comment on verse 2 0 You’re bursting for a jimmy (riddle)
But for your kind? No cost spared
So they’ve gone and splashed out a shed

3 Leave a comment on verse 3 0 There’s no roof to the carzy,
As you look to the stars
To see if the weather will change

4 Leave a comment on verse 4 0 If it does, what d’you care,
You’re just totally out there,
Loyally suffering all this for ‘the game’

5 Leave a comment on verse 5 0 A corrugated sheet hides reality
Where folks sat indoors watch t.v
The comfort in that just escapes me and mine
As I’m stood wet and cold sipping tea

6 Leave a comment on verse 6 0 Who cares if ‘away end’s uncovered’?
“It’s printed on tickets” he said’
Only mad fans like us would be bothered to come
One day, they say, we’ll watch matches like these from our beds

7 Leave a comment on verse 7 0 We clap our hands to raise up our spirits
As welcomed hip flasks are passed round
The moment the warmth from sweet brandy
Kicks in, all surroundings take on a new sound

8 Leave a comment on verse 8 0 A few of the old songs get started,
As we mellow to cheer on the team,
Who are down in the depths of this hell hole
Unprepared for the quagmire we’ve seen

9 Leave a comment on verse 9 0 We jump up and down so circulation is
Sound, enough to keep us warmed up from within
Twenty minutes to kick off and still no let up,
In the rain, as it carry’s on tipping

10 Leave a comment on verse 10 0 You puff on a fag, whilst cracking droll gags
On the crazy mystique of the call
You’re stuck in the middle in the arse (nal) end of nowhere,
With bated breath waiting,
To watch twenty two blokes kick a ball!

© kjp raymond 2006

Notes

Been there, done it! There’s nothing quite like it!

Words can not explain the beauty of the whole mad experience as you get, soaking wet, back in to the motor, having managed to avoid slipping on the banana skin of a cup tie agin a lower league team, we nicked a hard fought draw, brought them back to our place and beat them.

But it’s the being at the away game that sticks in me mind as you start to think to yourself ‘I took an afternoon off work, travelled miles to stand here in the middle of nowhere, soaked to the skin, with me mates, cheering on the boys, watching this. Am I mad’?

The lower league sides are usually ‘right up for it’ and perform as if inspired, in the search for the scalp of one of the so called ‘big boys’!

Which at the time we were most certainly not, having only just avoided going skint, the year before.

peace

kev.

Source: http://footballpoets.org/poems/a-wednesday-night-in-walsall-1980/