Football Poets

The 2026 World Cup

My mate says he’s going to boycott the World Cup:
He says he’s not going to watch any of the matches;
I said you have to set your alarm clock then,
Because sleeping through the night isn’t a boycott,
That’s just sleeping – if you’re going to boycott,
You have to get up in the middle of the night,
Trudge downstairs and sit, sanctimonious,
In front of the telly without turning it on.
Now I admit I have some sympathy
With his proposed abstemiousness:
The reasons for a boycott are legion,
So obvious, evident and embarrassing
That they don’t need mentioning or listing –
But let’s slip in good old Baudrillard:
‘Power is only too happy to give football
a diabolical responsibility for stupefying the masses’ …

But …
If we vacate that space then who takes it over?
If we flag, who takes over the flags?

Speaking as a quietly patriotic citizen
(Grandfather fought throughout the four years from 1914;
Father fought at Tobruk, and in the jungle behind Japanese lines;
I appeared as Cupid at the Coronation street party in 1953)
I think we should remember our history,
And try to reclaim the flags from the angry,
So as to rescue the poor and anonymous
From ‘the enormous condescension of posterity’:
Instead of war and empire and aggrandisement,
Instead of kings and queens and admirals and generals,
The Peasants’ Revolt, the Diggers, the Levellers,
John Ball! Robin Hood! Gerard Winstanley,
The Maroons! Olaudah Equiano!
The gypsy liberty of John Clare’s vision!
Democratic pirate ships and a freed Man Friday!
Thomas Spence! John Thelwall!
Robert Wedderburn! William Davidson! William Cuffay!
Mary Wollstonecraft! Sylvia Pankhurst!
The Tolpuddle Martyrs and all their trade union descendants
Right up to the lines in today’s gig economy …

It’s their flag too.
And mine.

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