Football Poets

Bromley, Coventry, Ipswich

¶ 1 Leave a comment on verse 1 0 Yesterday the Ravens
Landed on the highest rooftop
Cawing with sheer delight
Birds of paradise
Bromley, promotion at work
A small corner of South London
Feast ravenously on
What the great Bryon Butler
Footballing radio majesty
Might have called the sweet trolley
Of football’s most delicious desserts
It’s League One for Bromley
How on earth did that one happen?
Bromley who once performed their
Local amateur dramatics
In front of two dogs and
Several whispers on touchlines
Where Non League breezes
Softly caressed our ears
But now little old Bromley
Have really hit the big time
And for a moment or two
Your mind remembers
Barrow, Accrington Stanley,
Maidstone, Workington
In working class overalls
Humble, full of humility
A world away from the
Sometimes pompous prima donnas
Of Manchester City, Liverpool,
Aston Villa, Manchester United
But certainly not Arsenal
For they seemed destined
For the big prize
Of the Premier League
But here on the borders
Of Kent’s green and pleasant gardens
Where little disturbs the tranquillity
Of springtime blossoms
Bromley, bonny, buoyant,
Gripped by ecstasy
A far cry from those rickety terraces
Of yesterday and history
Where once long ago
Stone walls, crying and aching
To be among the higher elite
Where names of local businesses
Stared mournfully into the distance
Peeling, flaking, disappearing into
The greying concrete of
Shameful neglect and disrepair
But not now
Bromley you’re upwardly mobile
Onwards and upwards
Half way to the top of Everest
Crampons by the ready
Keep going Bromley
Yes, you can do it
But beware the likes
Of Wimbledon
Who once won the FA Cup
But then tumbled disastrously
Back down from whence they came
Once Premier League
Hot properties but now
Climbing back to the dizzy heights
Yesterday, Bromley, accompanied
By Coventry and Ipswich
Wound their way around
Triumphant open top bus
Parades of pomp and pageantry
Promotion for the Sky Blues
Who once touched the clouds
Of Jimmy Hill’s rousing revolution
And then lifted the FA Cup too
In 1987, when Spurs were spooked
Just for the day
But Coventry are back
Among the big boys of
The Premier League’s increasingly
Crowded playground
No longer sent to anywhere
But the Premier League
And finally lest we forget
The Tractor Boys, flushed
With yet more success
Ipswich Town
Top flight residents
Again hobnobbing
With the Arsenals, Liverpools
The Citys and Uniteds
Of the higher echelons
Ipswich Town
Ploughing their fields
In the hope of notable crops
Yesterday management
Gave their workers promotion
At the end of heady seasons
Where excellence now lives
It’s time to place
Well deserved crowns
On the heads of those
Who deserve these
Golden days in the sun
Bromley, Coventry and Ipswich Town
Congratulations all around

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