Football Poets

The FA Cup in September

¶ 1 Leave a comment on verse 1 0 The FA Cup in September
The FA Cup third qualifying round
Surely a typo
A seasonal anomaly
This has to be our
Imagination working
Overtime
We’ll wake from
Our early morning
Sleepy, soporific torpor
It has to be a mistake
Bleary eyed bewilderment
But it’s Saturday
So it has to be the FA Cup
To those of us who
May be ritualistic
Traditionalists
And yet you were right
The first time
It’s the FA Cup
Third round qualifying stage
Where local parklands
With silvery streams
And timeless commanding
Trees, beeches, pines,
Larch and redwood
Stand like disciplined
Squaddies and regiments
Platoons of soldiers
Those wonderful trees
Spilling out cascades
Of autumnal yellowing
And brown leaves
Football among boating lakes
Bowling greens,
Pitch and putt golf courses
Suspend your belief
Since the FA Cup
Has arrived on your doorstep
Next to your glowing red roses
Pruned to your satisfaction
Adjacent to the park keeper’s hut
It’s the FA Cup third qualifying round
Nestling in the nasturtiums
Buoyant by the begonias
Corners and free kicks next
To the happiest of hedgerows
Verging on the right and left wing
Of bright eyed and bushy tailed bushes
The FA Cup competing against
Saturday morning children
Screaming, yelling and giggling
At full volume
Loud and stentorian as
The factories we used to hear
As children
There’s the Essex derby
Between Aveley and Hornchurch
Blyth Spartans, once giant killers
Goliath themselves
From another age
Against robust and redoutable
Worksop Town
It just has the FA Cup
Written all over it.
There’s Bracknell Town
From snug and cosy suburbia
Warmly folded between
The comforting blankets
Of the FA Cup’s magic
Bracknell against Poole Town
It sounds like a firecracker
Smoking in the autumnal peat
Of the FA Cup’s misty
Mellowness
Football singularly lacking
In the airs and graces
Of those who believe that
Wembley in May
Has to be their destiny
Biggleswade Town
Now that’s almost a classical
FA Cup reference point
Typical of its legendary
Heritage, a name longing
To be chanted in years to come
Today St Albans visit Biggleswade
In the FA Cup
Possibly never uttered again
In any sentence or circumstance
Least of all the FA Cup
Among the lofty company
Of third round day
When the big boys
Muscle in on their rightful
Territory, terrifying thought
But Bromsgrove will face
Chelmsford City
And Carshalton Athletic
Will meet Cray Valley
Paper Mills
It almost rolls off the tongue
With the sweetest piquancy
Like profiteroles for tea
The FA Cup in September
It has to be the wrong track
On the wrong album
Braintree against Brookley Town
No, this is alliteration
Overload, too much to take in
Deliberately eye catching
But down by the Weeping Willow
Alfreton meet Emley AFC next
To the gurgling brook
Next to the post office
Take a sharp turn
By the park gates
And stick to the leafy lane
Where the FA Cup awaits
With those first signposts
We can hear the resounding whistling
Of the park keeper on his cycling round
The FA Cup third qualifying round followed
By yet more rounds
In all its primness
And pertness
Fresh, tasty and palatable
As the apples of Kentish orchards
Sweet tasting tales of FA Cup glory
Harvest Festival time now
Here to stay for a while
Let’s treasure
The first whispers of winter
This is FA Cup day
Everybody
Believe it or not

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