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The Day We Lost A Football Team

Crispin Thomas

Saturday, January 27th, 2018

1 Leave a comment on verse 1 0 if you were alive child woman or man
you remember the day still
like yesterday like Lennon like Kennedy
or the day we landed on the moon
and I was only ten
I cried into my tea
the day we woke to realise
we’d lost a football team

2 Leave a comment on verse 2 0 that moment when everything
slowed to a moan
like singles when the power would go
or 78s on out of turn gramophones
the day we woke to realise
we’d lost a football team

3 Leave a comment on verse 3 0 so young then all life before me
and so in awe of maybe just maybe
the greatest team we ‘d ever spawned
and for so many of those we lost
their lives too so clearly just begun
but all that changed
all gone upon a runway to nowhere
the day we woke to realise
we’d lost a football team

4 Leave a comment on verse 4 0 the morning dawned
to find you
staring into your Weetabix
not speaking at breakfast
gazing in disbelief
at grainy snowy shots
in muddled black and white
there upon the table
the day we woke to realise
we’d lost a football team

5 Leave a comment on verse 5 0 what point school today?
must I go mum?
we didn’t even support United
but united we all were then
when fate cast that shadow
one cold Munich afternoon
upon our game upon our world
I just remember how sick I felt inside
so sad so sad
the day we woke to realise
we’d lost a football team

6 Leave a comment on verse 6 0 watching the heartbreaks
on our new tv
loved ones parents friends
as bedsid vigils unfolded before our eyes
Duncan Edwards Frank Swift
Tommy Taylor Roger Byrne.23 in all
the names go on..
where have they gone
where too those sixty years?
and on that day as this
we think of them
as then as now
the way we felt
the helplessness
the day we woke to realise
we’d lost a football team

7 Leave a comment on verse 7 0 © CTO8

Notes

Editor Note.Commemorating The Munich Air Crash Feb 6th 1958.

NB The average age of ‘that’ incredible United side was 21.

( Please excuse the re-publishing of this updated poem .First appeared here in 2008 to commemorate 50 years)

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Source: http://footballpoets.org/poems/the-day-we-lost-a-football-team-60-years-on/