Football Poets

Same old story

¶ 1 Leave a comment on verse 1 0 After all those
Vivid traumas and hardships
Of England blowing hot
And then cold, searching
For anything like World Cup
Redemption in the Americas
And the maple syrup dessert
Of Canada
West Ham, the team
Still to be credited
As the eleven who won
Our only World Cup in 66
Now find themselves back
At the drawing board
Square one
It’s the same old story
Same time, same place,
Identical window, table
And chair, that withered
Flower and plant
That may have last seen
Water in 1966
For the League season
Opening defeat to Chelsea
At a sun soaked Upton Park
While Mooro, Sir Geoff and Martin
Wheeled away amid a
Swarm of honey sweet acclaim
Roll forward to 2026
And a replica, a genuine artefact
Of the last archaeological dig
For a West Ham win on opening day
The Hammers lose their first home match
In the Championship
Defeat to the Addicks of Charlton
Spot the irony
Yet another London club
Leave claret and blue shirts
Flat on their backs
This is simply too predictable
For words, like a sentence
Without any flow or grammatical sense
At this rate West Ham
Will be rubbing shoulders with
The Grimsbys, Rochdales, dare
You even think it
Accrington Stanley,
Yes who are they, exactly?
So where does your lifetime
Allegiance to your club
Take it from here?
Sack the manager,
That would be too easy
Perseverance for a while
But by then the Hammers
Could be dropping like
A stone to the bottom of
The proverbial basement
The dank, dark and forbidding
Well of relegation
Piranhas circling ready
To bite for the lethal kill
At the moment
The grim cemetery that is
The London Stadium
Is baying for blood again
Too many haunting ghosts
Perhaps driving fans to a thousand shots
A superabundance of booze
Lorry loads of lager and
Is there any point in supporting
West Ham United?
When quite clearly
Disunited and disrupted
Fits the trades descriptions act
Absolutely perfectly
All out brothers and sisters
It’s time for revolt
Down tools, avoid West Ham
Like the plague
Because Nuno it’s your fault
Point the finger of culpability
At Nuno, blame the governor
He, after all, is the commander in chief
And all of those training ground
Routines, schemes, drills are
Just not working
Today it was all a million
Short passes going around
The airport carousel that is
West Ham’s modus operandi
Like suitcases and bags
Going around and around
Increasingly in aimless circuits
One day the ball will end up
At Luton rather than Heathrow
Before disappearing and
Vanishing without trace
No thought, method, gameplan
Nothing coherent, clear thinking
Hesitation and deviation
Stuttering and staggering
Rather like the pub drunk
Who loses their way and ends
Up with a fleeting relationship
With a lamp-post
It’s all very sad and pathetic
Self inflicted wounds
Seeping from still
Blood stained stitches
Charlton take the lead
With an extraordinary bicycle kick
Then pile on the agony with a second
To seal the points for the Addicks
West Ham do find consolation in a goal
But by now, it’s too late
Chucking out time, lads
Damage limitation
And just to add fuel to the fire
Taty just completely messes up
A penalty that should have
Been stroked home by Jarrod
The captain Bowen
Autumn on our doorstep
And already the
Irate natives are restless
In fact fuming and foaming
At the mouth
No hope of instant promotion
Back to the Premier League
Rather just stagnation,
Static stasis
What happened to that
Iron constitution
Thames Ironworks
Where are you hiding?
You’re in there
Somewhere
But it’s the Hornets
Of Watford
Next for West Ham
And we know they sting
Under provocation
Maybe this is the right time
For the Vicarage Road
Congregation to drown out
Pretty Bubbles in the Air
Oh what will become of you
West Ham?
But keep the faith
44 matches to go

5