Football Poets

Spurs again and West Ham

¶ 1 Leave a comment on verse 1 0 The weekend begins with a puff of smoke
An explosive air hangs over Spurs
The smell of cordite
Beaten by the mesmerising Milan
During Champions League tete a tete
Now facing their London neighbours
On Sunday roast gatherings
Spurs and West Ham
A battle as old as the hills
Mutual loathing and yet not
Quite as personal as the team
In red at the Emirates
Spurs blowing hot and cold
Sometimes untouchable and
Unsurpassable, once a force of nature
The next rather like a sandcastle
Washed away by thirsty seas
And yet they hate the claret and blue
For reasons that may seem beyond us
The intolerable ones they cry
When was the last time the Hammers
Lifted a heavyweight trophy aloft
But then the sages who preside
Over the London Stadium
Consult their Rothmans again
And find Spurs as holders
Of the 1991 FA Cup against
Cloughie’s Forest, sadly
His last stand
How we lament the impassioned
Brian. Young man
But Spurs and West Ham
It almost sounds like an argument
In an old fashioned saloon bar
Give me another whisky and bourbon
Barman and bar woman before chucking out time
You remember the contests of old
The emperor Bobby Moore, Clyde Best,
Johnny Ayris, Ade Coker pitting their wits
Against the lovably warm hearted Greavesie,
Martin Chivers, now there was a Spurs legend
Of noble breeding and stature,
Alan Gilzean ghosting through defences
A poltergeist of a player
Barely discernible but always cunning,
threatening and then lethal
Always in the same sentence
Invisible at one moment
Then striking like a cobra
In the undergrowth the next
Latching onto passes, the connection
The conduit through which everything
Spurs did flow
Then there was Ralph Coates
Lovely Ralph
Hair like a corn of the cob
Wisps of hair combed over
Discreetly but always drawn
To a football magnetically,
Always gliding towards goal
Like a young cygnet near
A late summer evening of
Sun beams rippling over
The rivers of our childhood
And of course today, always
And there was Steve Perryman
Solid as a rock, the late
Cyril Knowles, Nice one Cyril
Always tackling the thorniest
Of issues
But on Sunday Conte’s Spurs
Meet Moyes East Enders
For tenancy rights,
The keys to local derby
Supremacy
This is our manor
Our victory just for the day
No unsavoury quarrelling gentlemen
Though. It is only football
But for Spurs and West Ham
This will be the end of their world
Should the Lillywhite shirts triumph
Or claret and blue just mature with
Vintage aplomb
Then tempers may flare
When football abandons sanity
And the local London derby
With its pungent odours
Of gallows humour
Poison and vitriol in the air
A gentle whiff of altercation
Then righteous indignation
We hate Tottenham
And we hate Tottenham
Before they launch
Another artillery of verbal
Bullets at the claret and blue
Army.
Then violent insults pour
From bitter Spurs lips loaded
With hatred
Yet maybe laced with
Grudging appreciation
Of each other
Never expressed
In the heat of battle
Withering four lettered invective
Oh what an unseemly feud
Oh the fond memories of Bill Nick
And the avuncular Ron Greenwood
Your uncle, our cousin, our friend
Managers taught the virtues
Of good manners and morality
Spurs and West Ham
The local derby must commence
Again. Act two, scene two.

25