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Going to the Match 1953-2003 (extract)

Ralph Hancock

Friday, February 6th, 2004

1 Leave a comment on verse 1 0 “He’s not as good as me” the art of the
wag never dies. Going to the Match was the
first fanzine. There’s Lowry selling it for
tuppence: populist, unconventional,
anarchic, always on the outside. He
wanted to get close, but couldn’t. The detail
of the end terrace at Burnden can only
be seen from the distance of a brushstroke,
each person has an identity, a brush
as fine as a fingerprint, grey, white, red,
yellow. Our passport to football, love, hate,
hooked. The worse the team plays the more we
have to go: home, away, it’s an obsession.
Lowry did not manufacture it or
judge us as pathetic or desperate.

Notes

Ralph Hancock’s ‘Going to the Match 1953-2003’, was commissioned by the Professional Footballers’ Association to celebrate the 50th anniversary since L.S. Lowry completed the painting ‘Going to the Match’. It is published with funding from Arts Council England.

It may be the first ever ‘poetryzine’ and is a souvenir that Bolton Wanderers fans, Lowry lovers and of football poetry in general will not want to miss. It will be on sale outside the Reebok, priced £2, from Saturday February 21st 2004 before and after the match.

Alternatively copies of the poem can also be obtained from Ralph direct by email, rhancock-pilsley@fsmail.net or phone 01246 850023 (at £3 including postage and packing), and by ordering through bookshops ISBN 0953429660.

Source: http://footballpoets.org/poems/going-to-the-match-1953-2003-extract/