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“Non League Day”

Dulwich Poet

Wednesday, September 24th, 2014

1 Leave a comment on verse 1 0 Such a simple concept
Inventing Non League Day
I never realised how much
Until Dulwich entered the fray.
I could never have imagined
Champion Hill packed to the hilt
Biggest crowd we’ve ever seen
Since the Stadium was built.
If I’d have predicted capacity
Three thousand in the place
You’d accuse me of being on drugs
Stoned and off my face.
But we pulled off the impossible
Beyond our dreams and more
That was despite Hampton & Richmond
Hardly being a draw.
The power of publicity
And being such a famous name
Embracing ‘Pay What You Like’
In their thousands they came.
Second highest in non-league
Better than Crawley in League One
If you put in the hard work
Local people will come.
Raising a massive amount for charity
Totalling seven grand
With fans marching from Peckham Rye
Led by a ukelele band!
The knockers call us hipsters
And mock women in a football crowd
But each and every one of our fans
Made me really proud.
It was so much more than ‘Pay What You Like’
That brought thousands to our gate
It was hardcore fans pulling together
Not just cheap football as bait.
Spreading the word promoting our club everyone’s a mate
Old Skool Fans & New-veau ones
That made Non League Day so great.
A quiet moment in the boardroom
I shed a few tears of joy
One of the most amazing days of my life
Dulwich Hamlet man and boy.

Notes

(Saturday 6th September was Non League Day, and my club, Dulwich Hamlet had a ‘Pay What You Like’ Day for charity. Fans put in a huge amount of work to publicise the game, & we were rewarded with our record attendance at our ground, which opened in 1992, of 2,586. ‘Unofficially’ it was certainly more, but we only have an ‘official’ capacity of 3,000; so could not exceed that)

Source: http://footballpoets.org/poems/non-league-day/