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Poems tagged ‘Hackney Marshes’

Hackney Marshes

joe morris

Saturday, December 13th, 2025

Oh Hackney Marshes
Surely the birthplace of
Sunday football
Where the first cries
And screams of wholesome
Proper football made
Its first team entrance
The boggy marshlands
Of wintry nine or ten
Goal thrillers
The boys who retire
To their local boozer
A magical microcosm
Of dear old England
How we love the
Vast diversity of
Man on, down the line mate.
Thousands of posts and crossbars
A mass confusion of VARs
And yet they never take this seriously
Football’s grassroots
Where men and women in thick
Sheepskin coats, stand stoically
In all seasons
Like statues both old and young
On barely visible touchlines
Yelling, pleading, feeling,
Too emotional and sensitive
Breathing choice and vitriolic
Words of purple profanity
But don’t tell mum and dad
They had standards and values
And so do we
Football on Hackney Marshes
Played the game until midnight
If they had their way
Just for the fun of it
And yet they do believe
In the fiery furnaces of competition
Linking daisy chains of passes in muddy
Minefields of midfield
Overlapping cavalry charges
Down laughingly invisible wings
On me head, son or daughter now
That insistence on effort
100 per cent of commitment
Even though it may be a
Hackney Marshes eleven
Against the lads from
The local electricity board
Or the tireless farmers
Who send combine harvesters
Over vibrant village grounds
Hackney Marshes
This is where football
May have been born

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Source: https://footballpoets.org/news/poem-tags/hackney-marshes/