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Morality and the League Tables

Stuart Butler

Monday, April 30th, 2001

1 Leave a comment on verse 1 0 Suburban April Sunday,
Early morning dawn chorus wake up,
Hangover church bells chiming,
No milk for tea,
Run out of bread,
Buy the papers,
Study the tables,
And have your wife disturb your concentration
By shoving an article from the Observer in your face.
Stuart Jeffries in Paris,
Recounting how left bank philosophers
Complain that sport is cretinising the minds of the masses,
By creating a spurious community,
Where real morality
(a la Camus and goalkeepers)
Is replaced by acceptance of hypocrisy and illegality,
And where sportsmen and women are forgiven
For their wealth and corruption,
In a collective, amnesiac, suspension of disbelief,
And where supporters,
A la Robert Redeker,
“Don’t get bored in front of sporting spectacles
which are always the same, cyclical,
as if time had been frozen.”
I nodded my head in mute agreement,
And returned to the study of the league tables,
Where the only constant is flux.

Source: http://footballpoets.org/poems/morality-and-the-league-tables/