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Preparing for the night match

Neale Blackburn

Monday, March 24th, 2003

1 Leave a comment on verse 1 0 Here as I sit in front of sky sports TV
I remember how it used to be
Watching leaden hands drag round
Before I could get out and head for the ground.
Thirty years passed since I was eight
But I still find meself in a similar state
Free for the evening and home for some Tea
Feeding the butterflies not the slightest hungry
Preoccupied on the match and who’ll win it
Scrutinising clocks for each passing minute
Willing its journey would more quickly pass
So me and mates from out of our class
Can troop off into the Burnden bound throng
To our place on the Paddock voices raised in song
Hoping our heroes would be carried along
Lifted to greater and greater feats
As goal followed goal and banished defeat
In that small place in time ninety minutes took flight
And all to soon we were back out in the night
Not home to highlights no soccer am
With child’s imagination we didn’t need them
We had been there and witnessed the game
And flickering tele was never the same
As the newsreel of memories played back in our heads
As we headed off home to be packed off to beds
Tomo skinned full backs and delivered the threat
Byrom met it square and headed into the net
Repeated from all angles over and over
Snuggled and warm under winter cover
Now I await Gray and Tyler painting their words
Over my modern day counterparts who go almost unheard
Effects mikes tone down the competing chants
As one punctuates the Scot’s accented rants
But I hope and believe as I watch from afar
That today’s eight-year-old Wanderers go home under stars
The visions and excitement shared are the same
Commitment to Bolton and love of the game
I envy them their thirty years ahead
While I kill time to kick off writing poems instead.

© norm the jedi 2003

Notes

Travelling in hope is often better than arriving but anticipation of a night game is all the better if it ends like tonights last minute J J penalty sweet dreams young Wanderers sweet dreams indeed

Source: http://footballpoets.org/poems/preparing-for-the-night-match/