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Training

John Kay

Monday, July 20th, 2015

1 Leave a comment on verse 1 0 Up the Pavilion steps and down and up the Pavilion steps and down and through the Pavilion car park panting past the Pavilion panto’ queues. Running as a team, running as a team, a twenty four leg-ged sweating machine. Up the Pavilion steps and down and round the Pavilion back and through the gardens. Snurching, spitting a trail of phlegm towards the prom’. Running as a side, running as a side, pumping hearts, determined stride. Squelching socks sogging through sandy puddles. Past the piles of washed up seaweed, Christmas lights and locked up cafes, stacks of deck chairs, beach huts, dogs and joggers. Cracking ankles, hacking lungs, past the grunting bundles slumped in glassless shelters. In and out of make-believe defenders, sprinting, hopping, stretching seized up hamstrings, press-ups, star jumps, squats and leaps to head imaginary balls. For us, Goldsands has no gold, just sand, the sea of faces has no faces; the ripple of applause is just a ripple; and the waves of emotion are just waves.
On Sunday morning will we be worth the salt that now sprays down on our steaming heads?

Notes

The Goldsands Stadium is the new name for Bournemouth’s ‘Dean Court’

Source: http://footballpoets.org/poems/training/