Football Poets

FA Cup first round day.

By the crackling log fires
Of the FA Cup first round
Born on the day
Of crisp November
Autumnal breezes
Rustling through
Our minds your
Rain soaked
Thought processes
Blustery acoustics
Hear the communal chants
Of the local choristers
The FA Cup
The bricks and mortar
Of football’s concrete
Foundation stone
Huddled snugly
Next to the dimly lit
Refreshment vans
Snack bars
Groaning with hot toddies
Tea of course the
Best drink of the day
The FA Cup backing onto
Mighty bastions
Of once fragrant back
Gardens of Eden
Possibly not
But back by next June
By popular demand
When the Euros dawn
But now for the time being
Fences shivering with
Fear and trepidation
Trembling with tension
But then the thankful
Release of gusty showers
Rocking backwards and
Then forwards those
Floodlights and feverish fans
Small knots of football’s
Devoted, hardy souls
Weather irrelevant
Who cares, it’s the FA Cup?
Football’s National Anthem
Swaying, tumbling, surging
But save that for another round
Of the FA Cup
Scarves tightly secured
To necks rising, craning
Over the next generation
Dads, uncles and aunties
With cousins, but now
The FA Cup
Stocked with the burger odyssey
A voyage to Wembley
But alas not for the little
Non League fraternity
No delusions of grandeur
But maybe one day
Who knows?
Just happy to be there
With us and you
For a while in November
Before gale force perspectives
David meets Goliath
The first coats and jumpers
Of football’s first layers
To warm the cockles of our hearts
The FA Cup always welcomes
Its giants and wishful thinking
Idealists who always
Keep their feet on the ground
Since equality is today, now
And tomorrow, a temporary
Acquaintance with the shock
Horror of the slaying of
Gulliver’s travels
The little minnows rub
Hands of feverish animation
Then realise their station
Aldershot score a Biblical torrent
Of goals
Seven of the best
Against Swindon
Now on the bottom rung
Of the League ladder
But Wiltshire
Made in the mould of
Modesty and no illusions
Although four meant
So much more
Because 7-4
Is almost a throwback
To post war rationing
When goals almost spoilt
Us with their mouth watering
Textures of tastes
Sweet and salt
Fires in their belly
Barrow with a hat-trick
Against Northampton
Cobblers shoe horned into
Their place
The thick leather
Sole of muddied heroes
Emblematic of its soul
Wimbledon, the Wombles
Who once shook the game
And turned the game on
Its head with
The Lawrie Sanchez
Glancing header against
Legendary world famous
Liverpool
The last time the big
Boys were humbled
And humiliated
By Wimbledon’s not so
Common, just beaten
Fair and square
Anfield just silenced
Completely
Traumatised by the
Dons, left speechless
By Kenny Dalglish’s highly
Academic swots
The Dons
Become undergraduates for the day
Bristol Rovers
Bear fruit
By the agricultural
Crop of country goals
Seven against Whitby
Who return to the gentle
Harbours of the FA Cup
Sore and chastened
But nonetheless pleased
To be part of football’s
Traditional heartlands
Where the seething furnaces
Glow with heated conversations
On rickety terraces
Stands like chocolate boxes
Quaint havens
Of warm as toast intimacy
Where the farmers shake hands
With the plumbers and engineers
The post men and women
Greet each other on the same turf
As seasons that faded, then burst
Into life when winter was left
Brooding and moody
But how good the FA Cup felt
1953 was indeed reincarnated
Excavated by the hands
Of football’s romantic diggers
Blackpool and everything that
Stans Matthews and Mortensen
And then Bill Perry
Clinched then shut down
Neighbouring Bolton in the
Matthews Final
70 years ago
But blink your eyes
And you could have been
There transported back
On a chariot of nostalgia
The Seasiders shift Bromley
Where Kentish oast houses
Brush harmoniously
By the Garden of England
Bolton also champions of
Reminiscence and rip roaring
Tales of derring do
Farewell Solihull Moors
Now that sounds like
The embodiment of the FA Cup,
Where the blood keeps pumping
The oxygen of the Cup’s
Heartiest chamber
Cambridge’s intellectual cloisters
Echoing to the beat of a
Brief encounter
Yesterday the university city
Resounded to victory
Against Bracknell Town
It almost seemed as if
The budding financiers
Of the future were swotting
In the Abbey Stadium
Against those richly
Decorated stain windows
Of the Cup’s holiest shrine
And finally just to redress
The educational balance
Oxford whose literary
Heritage is still etched
Onto the walls and bustling
Minds of their
Scholarly veins
History in the halls
Of learning
Yet yesterday Oxford United
By nature and nurture
Oxford see off Maidenhead
Now no more than some
Paragraph in the local prose
And verse of the weekly journal
Marine, it does sound like some
Naval nail biter, nautical
To the finger tips
Briny in their bones
Marine, splice the mainbrace
Land ahoi,
The captain of the FA Cup ship
Steers a steady course
And yet yesterday
Whipped into a frenzy
Battered into submission
Swept under the carpet
Thumped and then just
Left helpless and forlorn
By the ferocious roar
Of the Cup’s most melodious
Chords, crotchets and quavers
Notable notes
Harrogate bring down
Marine quite possibly
By football’s quayside
With five by five
The good citizens of
Harrogate Town
Crushing Marine
With nothing to offer
But a fish supper
Next to the bobbing boats
Of the Saturday evening
Cheers, thrills and spills
Spices and seasoned with
Relish, a plate of goodness
The first round of the FA Cup
Famous throughout the world

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