Football Poets

Shels 2 Lille OSC 2 Medley

¶ 1 Leave a comment on verse 1 0 Prelude

¶ 2 Leave a comment on verse 2 0 My stammer’s disimproving
And I can’t pronounce my vowels.
Something strange is moving
In the bottom of my bowels.
I’m feeling palpitations
And a tremor in my chest.
I know my concentration’s
Not approaching near its best.
My mind obliquely ponders
All the pitfalls of the tie,
Then slides away and wanders
Through reports of games gone by.
I’m smelling sizzling bacon,
But my hunger’s gone astray.
The Beatles were mistaken,
Sure, this is a hard night’s day.

¶ 3 Leave a comment on verse 3 0 Seven Thousand Four Hundred

¶ 4 Leave a comment on verse 4 0 The rain it was sheeting,
Emphatically beating.
Onto sparse seating
It volleyed and thundered.
Surrounded by spaces,
The old Shelbourne faces
Sat down in their places,
Seven thousand four hundred.

¶ 5 Leave a comment on verse 5 0 Fans indivisible,
Large gaps too visible,
Atmosphere risible,
Someone had blundered.
Lower stand pretty full,
Barely a city-full,
Crowd numbers pitiful,
Seven thousand four hundred.

¶ 6 Leave a comment on verse 6 0 Kick-off time mess up,
Bringing our stress up,
Result cannot dress up
The chance wasn’t plundered.
We should have been backed more,
We tried to extract more,
But couldn’t attract more
Than seven thousand four hundred.

¶ 7 Leave a comment on verse 7 0 Tolka deserted
Of thousands red-shirted.
The fans disconcerted,
And many more wondered.
The reasons were touted
And earnestly shouted,
But seriously doubted.
Seven thousand four hundred!

¶ 8 Leave a comment on verse 8 0 Their Keeper

¶ 9 Leave a comment on verse 9 0 With bright white socks protruding
From beneath his golden kit,
Tony Silva looked just like
A giant orange split.

¶ 10 Leave a comment on verse 10 0 Lille Dish Out a Dose of Reality

¶ 11 Leave a comment on verse 11 0 To think we had the audacity,
The arrogant capacity
To think that we were up there with the rest!
A quagmire of self-delusion,
A mishmash of confusion,
Conspiring to deceive that we were blessed!

¶ 12 Leave a comment on verse 12 0 Like schoolboys in a battlefield,
More suited to a cattle field,
We stumbled as the French attack poured through us.
We simply stood there motionless,
Completely magic potionless,
Like frightened rats pinned to the ground with skewers.

¶ 13 Leave a comment on verse 13 0 Lille moved the ball emphatically,
Precisely, mathematically,
While we just scratched our sorry heads and wondered.
And though we battled pluckily,
At half time it was luckily,
A mere two slick, well-taken goals they’d plundered.

¶ 14 Leave a comment on verse 14 0 “Keep them out till half-time lads!”

¶ 15 Leave a comment on verse 15 0 “Keep them out till half-time, lads!”
I yelled, with sweat beads glistening.
“Keep them out!” I yelled, but I
Don’t think that they were listening.

¶ 16 Leave a comment on verse 16 0 Skulduggery at Half-Time

¶ 17 Leave a comment on verse 17 0 The winds they blew and cracked their cheeks,
The rain came pouring down.
Our back four sprang a lot of leaks,
The Lille lads went to town.

¶ 18 Leave a comment on verse 18 0 The hurricane blew hard and wet
In our defenders’ faces,
Which maximised the constant threat
Of Gallic runs to spaces.

¶ 19 Leave a comment on verse 19 0 The Frenchmen’s sails were billowed wide,
Pushed on by strong momentum,
Bolstered by a windy tide
And all the power it lent ‘em.

¶ 20 Leave a comment on verse 20 0 But then the wind, so fiercely armed,
At half time had recanted.
It suddenly became becalmed,
As if it were enchanted.

¶ 21 Leave a comment on verse 21 0 What trickery that lay abroad
Conspired to change the weather?
The natural scheme of things ignored,
Dismembered altogether.

¶ 22 Leave a comment on verse 22 0 Disciples of the cloven beast
Recited incantations.
Dark sorcery was thus released
To Shelbourne’s lamentations.

¶ 23 Leave a comment on verse 23 0 Was Prospero at Lansdowne Road
To soothe the raging foment?
Spread his wand and thus bestowed
Great calmness in a moment?

¶ 24 Leave a comment on verse 24 0 The gale-force winds no longer blew,
Their cheeks remained uncracked.
The Lille defence in stature grew
And thus remained intact.

¶ 25 Leave a comment on verse 25 0 Tetra Euro Blocker

¶ 26 Leave a comment on verse 26 0 Jason got his sun-block out
And spread it on his skin,
And then he ran onto the pitch
To help his teammates win.

¶ 27 Leave a comment on verse 27 0 But someone switched the labels round
[An evil Gallic plot?]
And Jason’s famous sun-block cream
In fact, alas, was not.

¶ 28 Leave a comment on verse 28 0 Instead it was an ointment which
Was meant for boring soccer.
The trade name it goes under is
“The Tetra Euro Blocker.”

¶ 29 Leave a comment on verse 29 0 It stops you scoring easy goals
In Europe’s competitions,
Tested on live monkeys in
Laboratory conditions.

¶ 30 Leave a comment on verse 30 0 And so, when scoring chances came,
Poor Jason couldn’t finish,
Stripped of his great powers just
Like Popeye without spinach.

¶ 31 Leave a comment on verse 31 0 When offering the stuff to Glenn,
Thank God he’d been rebutted.
No wonder Glenn was fairly chuffed
And Jason fairly gutted.

¶ 32 Leave a comment on verse 32 0 Limerick, You’re a Lady

¶ 33 Leave a comment on verse 33 0 When it came there was joy and relief,
An explosion that beggared belief.
Turned provider instead,
Jayo found Glenn’s blond head,
And he stole a great goal like a thief.

¶ 34 Leave a comment on verse 34 0 Such an outburst of sudden elation,
Including a standing ovation.
But though it was great.
‘Twas too little too late,
Although it was some consolation.

¶ 35 Leave a comment on verse 35 0 The mood-change invoked was detectable,
The scoreline was now more respectable.
But we just didn’t know
In three minutes or so,
It would go from “okay” to “delectable.”

¶ 36 Leave a comment on verse 36 0 A cross from persistent Dave Crawley
Was defended by Lille pretty poorly.
Jamie leapt out his skin,
And Glenn Fitz knocked it in,
With the keeper complaining quite sorely.

¶ 37 Leave a comment on verse 37 0 There were no protestations of knavery,
The net-bulge was both sweet and savoury.
And the place just erupted,
Our mind-set disrupted,
All thanks to our centre back’s bravery.

¶ 38 Leave a comment on verse 38 0 As Lazarus rose from the dead,
So did those brave warriors in red.
Re-incarnated
Re-invigorated,
We swarmed where we’d once feared to tread.

¶ 39 Leave a comment on verse 39 0 And by that great brace we were spurred
And continued with strength undeterred,
And hero Fitzpatrick
Just missed his first hat-trick,
When he miscued a possible third.

¶ 40 Leave a comment on verse 40 0 Epilogue

¶ 41 Leave a comment on verse 41 0 The fair weather fans decided to
Heed the strong gale warning.
I hope they feel a sense of loss
This fine September morning.
To those of us who braved the storm,
It’s possible that we’ll
Forever keep within our minds
The comeback versus Lille.