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Silence is Match of the Day

joe morris

Friday, March 10th, 2023

1 Leave a comment on verse 1 0 Oh Aunty Beeb
What a kerfuffle and rumpus
Silence falls across
TV’s football landscape
The rocks, boulders and valleys
Now barring the way
For Messrs Lineker, Wright
And Shearer
Football’s militant trade unionists
Digging their heels on
Matters of principle
Match of the Day with
Empty chairs and voices
Football and politics
It’s a delicate balancing act
Gary, Ian, and Alan
Boycotting a Saturday night
National treasure
Surely sacrilege but then
The nation finds itself
Torn between yet more
Conflicting feelings
In the heat of the moment
Migrants fleeing persecution
1930s language and rhetoric
From agonised and traumatised times
Exploding onto heated breakfast tables
Then dominating Friday evening
Saloon bar chit chat
Should Gary stick to VAR controversies
Endorsing the press and commending
The banks of defensive back fours
And his stock in trade
When Leicester, then Spurs and Everton
And famously Barcelona
Invested in goal- scoring nectar
Then Wrighty, firstly at the gates of
The Palace and then the purple seasons
At Highbury, a Gunner blasting brilliance
And Alan, Alan Shearer
In the Geordie furnaces
Newcastle proud and bold
Raise an ale to the St James Park legend
So Match of the Day
Will discover a sponsored twenty minutes of quiet
Moments of stunned disbelief
Football observing monastic orders
Tomorrow monks will creep through
The shocked corridors of the BBC
A haunted football castle
Former footballers exercising
The hands of democracy
Lone voices will be heard
Match of the Day reduced
To awkward murmurings over
Earnest beer and sandwich
Gatherings
Outrageous, brothers
Shall we take a count
Are they out or do
They take this one
To the highest court
In the land?
Withdraw your labour
Or just rage and rant
In the fading light
Gary’s protestations of
Innocence, he’s adamant
Never question Sir Bobby’s
Saviour at Italia 1990
It is merely a Twitter
Opinion, possibly
Tactless and ill advised
Let’s have some perspective
After all.
Surely wrong but then
Again right
A moral minefield
Confusion and panic
But then an oasis of calm
Even so how did
Match of the Day become caught
In this gun fire of mixed metaphors?
Perhaps stop these emotive words
Football deserves something
Much better
Now here pronto
Before social media
Comes face to face
With another volatile meltdown
Commonsense, that’s it.

Notes

Here’s the poetic homage to the Gary Lineker tweet that stirred up a hornet’s nest.

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Source: http://footballpoets.org/poems/silence-is-match-of-the-day/