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When Football Belonged To The Fans

Crispin Thomas

Friday, October 24th, 2025

1 Leave a comment on verse 1 0 The mind plays tricks with yesteryear 
and paints a golden view
the games the grounds the sights and sounds
the things we used to do
the mighty crowds that roared so loud
without a roof above 
the young and old who braved the cold 
to watch the game we love 

2 Leave a comment on verse 2 0 so primitive and ancient 
It conjures up a world
so very far from where we are
and how it’s all unfurled 
but still I look back on the days 
in pure unbridled joy 
those crumbling homes of weeds and stone  
when I was just a boy

3 Leave a comment on verse 3 0 when sixpence got you in to see 
the big stars of the day 
who made their names but walked to games 
for very little pay
and ran a shop when football stopped
or ran a pub maybe 
or just became a long lost name
in football’s history

4 Leave a comment on verse 4 0 but you and I remember still
the joy each Saturday  
to be a fans with scarf in hand
then running home to play  
upon the street in plimsolled feet
right up and down the land
when long ago the game we know
belonged to us..the fans  

Notes

I know it didn’t belong to us..but it felt like it!

I also know nostalgia ain’t what it used to be (boom boom) – but I wrote this after reading the Joe Morris ‘Mary Hopkinesque’ Those Were The Days Again poem.

This after also coming across a black and white image in snow from the fifties or earlier. You could almost smell the peanuts, damp raincoats and caps along with the pipe smoke and Bovril.

We are lucky today, that while the money in the game means ticket prices and salaries grow more and more insane , down at non-and lower league level, we can still experience that community spirit and feeling we knew way back when in some great old grounds with standing that survive.

Source: https://footballpoets.org/poems/when-football-belonged-to-the-fans/