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Rolling out the Green Carpet

Rowan Waller

Saturday, August 26th, 2023

1 Leave a comment on verse 1 0 I can’t wait.
I cannot wait for that groaning clunk as the turnstile spins and spits us out,
and the Saturday crowd all mills about
at Court Place Farm.
I can’t wait.
I cannot wait to be queueing for tea at a quarter to three,
for the cheerful ‘hello’s from the faces we’ll see
as we jostle for space.
I can’t wait.
I cannot wait for the whistle to blow, our first game at home,
for the cheers and the moans, the laughs and the groans,
the silly banter, the mindless chatter and checking our phones
for the other games’ scores (whether win, lose or draw),
to see where we are…
at two games in… and forty-four of them still to go…

2 Leave a comment on verse 2 0 I can’t wait!

3 Leave a comment on verse 3 0 #rowanthepoem

Notes

This was ahead of our (Oxford City’s) first home game of the 23/24 season – the first ever in the National League (which is the highest we’ve been…). Follows a 5-2 thumping on the road to Aldershot, but the optimists are out in force and we’re playing in our own manor – and, importantly, first time on our brand new 3G pitch (the green carpet of the poem’s title), a surface we’re used to. So, our hopes are high… but Rochdale were two leagues above us last season, and we know it won’t be easy.

This finishes with a nod to that unreasonable nature of us football fans, avariciously checking the league table, even at one or two games in, to plot how we think it might look in forty games or so time…

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Source: http://footballpoets.org/poems/rolling-out-the-green-carpet/