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Twenty years

Peter Goulding

Thursday, June 12th, 2008

1 Leave a comment on verse 1 0 Twenty years! Ah now, Caithlin, it’s hard to believe!
That match still looms fertile and strong all the same.
It’s many a thicket-hedged laneway that we’ve
Meandered in hope since that wonderful game.

2 Leave a comment on verse 2 0 Is it really so long since we turned that first page,
Not knowing if it were novella or tome.
Chapter on chapter upon the world’s stage,
New York, Ibaraki, Stuttgart and Rome.

3 Leave a comment on verse 3 0 The goal is indelibly etched in our hearts,
But what of the seventy eight minutes still left.
Lineker’s chances from Beardsley’s short darts?
Robson appalled at the scale of the theft?

4 Leave a comment on verse 4 0 We’ve come close in the years since that first epic match,
But never quite scaled the dizzying height
Of the ball striking net from young Houghton’s thick thatch,
As the new boys in green beat the old boys in white.

© Peter Goulding 12th June 2008

Notes

A match probably forgotten by England fans but one which has gone down in Irish folklore. 20th anniversary.

Source: http://footballpoets.org/poems/twenty-years/