|

Match Days

Denys E. W. Jones

Friday, July 8th, 2005

1 Leave a comment on verse 1 0 Monday to Friday you’re banged up in skool.
M&S blazer, prefect-enforced rules.
Chemistry, history, geography, maths.
O-levels soon, you’ll be lucky to pass.
Then you’re released for Match Day has come round.
Liberty! Freedom! Your joy knows no bounds!

2 Leave a comment on verse 2 0 Wolf down your breakfast of bacon‘n’eggs.
Pull on black Dockers, sling scarf round your neck.
Pop in the pub for an under-age pint.
(Hair of the dog, like, you sank ten last night).
Meet all your mates, then it’s off to the Ground.
(“Bit skint today, pal, you lend us a pound?”)

3 Leave a comment on verse 3 0 Squeeze through the turnstile, then onto your End.
To and fro’ swaying, aloft hold your hands.
Terrace chants baying at volume so loud.
Out of yourself and at one with the crowd.
Ninety short minutes of rapture and bliss.
How could you ever get fed up with this?

4 Leave a comment on verse 4 0 Onto the pitch stroll your Footballing Gods.
Overpaid idols, such mercenary sods.
Yet still you worship, bow down and adore.
Pleading and praying that one of ‘em scores.
Wish you were out there with them on the Park.
(Half of ‘em don’t even know how to pass).

5 Leave a comment on verse 5 0 Ref’s blown his whistle, it’s Full Time – so soon?
Sick as a parrot or over the moon.
Wonder how Man U and Arsenal got on.
Buy bag o’ chips and then thumb a lift home.
Here’s Jimmy ‘ill with his Match of the Day.
Such a long wait until next Saturday…

6 Leave a comment on verse 6 0 8/7/05
Denys E. W. Jones

© 8/7/05

Notes

This nostaligic, rose-tinted recollection of my teenage years is a re-working of Chuck Berry’s song School Days. If any schoolchildren are reading this, I would like to emphasise that, despite what I write in the opening stanza, being a teacher myself, I am in fact a firm believer in the value of education. Do you think I would be able to write poems if I had not studied and got my English O-level?

Source: http://footballpoets.org/poems/match-days/?shared=email&msg=fail