Football Poets

Oi Mister! Why’d Yer Just Tell Him To Do That?

¶ 1 Leave a comment on verse 1 0 After watching
A horde of track suited
Clearly overweight dads
Wearing expensive trainers
Shouting and screaming (I’d like to say cheering)
and often goading on their children
During Saturday, or Sunday morning football matches.

¶ 2 Leave a comment on verse 2 0 Where a bystander
Would think
Dad had played the game
Or coached at a professional level.

¶ 3 Leave a comment on verse 3 0 I’m taken back (smiling)
To the unforgiving pink cinders pitches
On the London parks/commons of my youth
Where I thought I was
The famous Russian goal-keeper Lev Yashin.

¶ 4 Leave a comment on verse 4 0 Simply because
I wore a dark roll neck sweater
Black shorts and stockings
(Belonging to the cubs)
When playing in goal
For the school team.

¶ 5 Leave a comment on verse 5 0 But…I wasn’t Yashin.
Any more than a track-suit and pair of trainers
Make a heart attack waiting to happen
Qualified enough to tell a child – his own or some-one else’s
For that matter – to get stuck in or worse
On an opponent
During a children’s game of football played over the week-end.

¶ 6 Leave a comment on verse 6 0 We have qualified coaches
To train children properly,
and instigating hurting or verbally abusing
Young people on the opposing team
Is not in any part of their remit
As even I can remember from my playing days of long ago.

¶ 7 Leave a comment on verse 7 0 Going out on to the field
For a game with your mates
We’d experience a thrill
That would last us for days.

¶ 8 Leave a comment on verse 8 0 Were you winning or losing,
Drawing or what?
Who cares? It was not of our choosing
While we accepted the occasional bruising
As being, part of our lot.

¶ 9 Leave a comment on verse 9 0 Did yer dads scream and shout
Like the dads of today
Not really they were mostly
Out working, so I honestly can’t say.

¶ 10 Leave a comment on verse 10 0 In my day young fella
Trainers trained football teams
As for track suits and flash gym shoes?
One wore them in their dreams.

¶ 11 Leave a comment on verse 11 0 We were children,
Just children
Playing games.
Without all this focus
On the winning of prizes
At all costs
Injuring an opponent
Or calling them names?

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