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Bob-a-man

1 Leave a comment on verse 1 0 Bob-a-man! Bob-a-man!
Put your money in!
Tuck your trousers into socks
and bare your boots to win!

2 Leave a comment on verse 2 0 Bob-a-man! Bob-a-man!
Common’s cinder pitch.
Worked all day. It’s time to play.
One goal and you’ll be rich!

3 Leave a comment on verse 3 0 Bob-a-man! Bob-a-man!
Stand up if you’re willing.
Double done, or nothing won.
It only costs a shilling!

4 Leave a comment on verse 4 0 Bob-a-man! Bob-a-man!
Drink away your spoils.
Exercise: it weren’t the prize.
The pub’s for what man toils!

5 Leave a comment on verse 5 0 Bob-a-man! Bob-a-man!
Put your money in!
Better play while you still can.
The light: it’s growing thin.

47

Notes

“Clough would also have watched matches played on the steelworks ground, but the first games he saw in which he had an emotional involvement were the ‘bob-a-man’ games on the cinder pitches on the common in which his eldest brother, Joe, used to play. Men, often wearing work boots with trousers tucked into socks, would pay a shilling each to join in, with the winning side taking the pot. The games were fiercely contested, and would often draw crowds of several hundred.” (Jonathan Wilson, Nobody Ever Says Thank You – Brian Clough – The Biography (London: Orion Books Ltd., 2011), at p. 7).

Source: http://footballpoets.org/poems/bob-a-man/