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Boxing Day fun and games

joe morris

Tuesday, December 26th, 2023

1 Leave a comment on verse 1 0 It was 60 years ago today
Sergeant Peppers was hardly
A child of nature
Let me introduce to you
The one and only
West Ham United
Boxing Day bonkers
The heaviest battering
Of modern times
Confidence shot to pieces
Demoralised and demolished
The Blackburn wrecking ball
Smashing the claret and blue
Collective beyond recognition
Wires of communication
Completely cut off
Hammers beaten 8-2
No you can hardly get
Your head around it
It’s like a bewildering
Alcoholic blur
Twisted, broken girders
Not so much a pantomime
That went horrifically wrong
More a case of Dick Whittington
Losing his way
Or far too many snowballs
Literally after the Lord Mayor’s
Show, there has to be
A rational explanation
But Upton Park reduced to
Whispers of incredulity
Shock, horror
No structure, game plan
Bryan Douglas, Andy Mcevoy,
Fred Pickering and company
Gorging hungrily on
The West Ham carcass
Torn to shreds
Oh what helpless humiliation
Thank goodness it was only
A morning trauma
Time for recovery
In East End
Drinking hostelries
It hardly seems like 60
Years since
This football poet
Demanded his first
Farley’s Rusk
And a dummy to soften
The blow to the midriff
Horrendous discovery
If only you had known
You’d have demanded
A repeat of
This grubby score line
David Coleman
Must have misread
That final score
On Grandstand
Apparently not
West Ham ship
Eight goals
By the team
Formerly known
As Blackburn Olympic
Thankfully no medals
On this occasion
The leaky sieve
Of the West Ham defence
Now flooding over
The mud bath of Upton Park
And yet a couple of days
Later.
Get your retaliation in
First, West Ham
3-1 victory at
Ewood Park
In the industrial
Heartlands of Lancashire
So good and satisfying
But it seemed only fair
West Ham
Always declining
Then lifting your hearts
Desire
Those Irons are iron clad

Notes

An ode to West Ham losing 8-2 on Boxing Day 1963.

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Source: http://footballpoets.org/poems/boxing-day-fun-and-games/