Football Poets

Scotland- England

¶ 1 Leave a comment on verse 1 0 Hampden Park. Tomorrow night
A feast of culinary proportions
The Auld Lang Syne Derby
Those Auld Firm enemies
Over a century of loathing
Rivalry unmatched anywhere
Scotland against England
Older than Coronation Street
If not quite as much
But this is another edition
Of Culloden and Bannockburn
Fierce flintlock and blunderbuss
Pistols drawn
Barely concealed fury
The grandfather of grudge matches
Smoking barrels drifting across
Hadrian’s Wall
A raging tempest of tartan
England, those Sassenachs
Wickedness in white
Don’t you dare darken our corridors
Remember 1977
When the old Wembley
Almost crushed under the stampeding
Feet of Scottish revenge
Cross bars and posts snatched
Away as souvenirs
England looted and pillaged
Trampled into oblivion
Dear late Gordon Mcqueen
Rising like the proverbial salmon
For the opener
Then King Kenny Dalglish
Rubbing salt into yet more
Cliched wounds
Then there was 1967
The year after the months before
Scotland breathing fire
Full of vengeful vigour
Explosive as Guy Fawkes night
Incensed and incendiary
In 1966 it was Geoff, Martin and Bobby
But then a year later
Jinky Jimmy Johnstone danced between
English swords in a joyous jig
3-2 victory for the Scots
Take that, England
In all of your insolent insularity
All of those centuries of Henry,
George and Edward in royal commands
Now there’s Robert the Bruce
Bonny Prince Charlie
Scottish football
An all domineering force
For good
Scotland against England
Tomorrow a special anniversary
But still needle and steel
At the heart of it all.
Feisty but at times almost flippant
Since nobody really takes it that
Seriously in Wales and Northern Ireland
Oh bring back the Home Internationals
Maybe for another day
For now let the battle commence
Tomorrow at Hampden
Where once Gemmell and Murdoch
Rioch and Gemmill
Hughie Gallagher with
The dazzling feet of different
Directions defying the compass
England and Scotland
The home of a Wembley massacre
Once 9-3 in the decade that swung
Then 3 goals to the good during
The 1970s
When Gerry Francis with a cracker,
Colin Bell and Kevin Beattie loaded
Their ammunition and fired
5-1 in the end, sweet as a sherbet
And Englishmen and women
Flabbergasted but thrilled
At the hilarity and humiliation
Tomorrow England and Scotland
We can hardly wait again.

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