Whatever Next (Part Two)

Men who a few short months before the slaughter


Had voted socialist and internationalist,

And who had struck for higher wages

Against their respective employers,

Be they German or British or sometimes both,

Were now once more united in common purpose,

And on a sort of shared common land,

Reading in the newspapers about when

Fritz and Tommy met in No Man’s Land,

And briefly shared a deepened understanding


Of how nationhood had hoodwinked them,

And destroyed lives and mutual empathy;

Not for them the esoteric knowledge


Of British shell manufacturers paying

Royalties on enemy patents,

As Capital respected Capital;

Instead, Christmas trees and fags and beer,

Frost-breath football, schnapps and cigars

Silhouetted against a setting blood-red sun.

And who cares about the one remembered score line?

Who cares about whosoever won the Flanders friendly?

For there is a deeper question to ask:

“What if they had played again the next day?”


And then the day after that as well,

And what if they had played mixed sides,

As did royal families, aristocracies and capitalists,

Dispensing with birthplace
 as the sole criterion for selection.

Whatever next?

What if the playing of the People’s Game


Had continued beyond that Christmas time?

What on earth would have ensued?

There might just have been a series of socialist revolutions,

A peaceful redrawing of the map and classes of Europe,

With an early end to European Empires and racial theories,

And with a new respect for the wonders of our planet -

Think about it.

And remember the People’s Game.

Whatever Next?

When War broke out, the British public cried


“We’ll be in Berlin by Christmas.” But


By Christmas hundreds of thousands had died,

As Mons, The Marne, Ypres and Messines cut


Down the youth of Europe, while Flanders’ flood


Drowned dying, dead and alive. Summer’s dream


Was swamped by winter’s mud, rats, death and blood


In No Man’s Land; a hell hole night mare scene


Of barbed wire, flares, shells, screams and shrapnel

(A choreographed commonality


That saw each side’s men attack, flail and fall


In ceaseless dance of death’s banality)
,

Until, at Christmas, nineteen fourteen, when


Hamburg, Berlin, London and Manchester


Said “No!” to the killing fields’ mad mayhem


Ordered by Kaiser, Flag, Map and Officer,

And met instead in friendship, walking tall


And slow, comrades in war’s adversities,

They embraced in No Man’s Land and Football


Harmonised nations’ animosities;

And what if the playing of the Peoples’ Game


Had continued beyond that Christmas time?

What on earth would have happened next?

Well, I suggest to you that none of the following


Would have occurred –


The Battle of the Somme; Verdun;

The Bolshevik Revolution; The Russian Civil War; Stalin; Hitler; Fascism; World War Two; nuclear weapons; the Cold War; Remembrance Day;

Think about it.

And play the Peoples’ Game this Christmas.

The Rodborough Doggy Tree

The Rodborough Doggy Tree

When the sun descends beyond yon hill,

And gilds the golden cumulus,

Thou shalt find me in the winter chill,

Cantering past some tumulus,

Or ancient circle, sarsen-girt,

Then on to fairest RODBOROUGH Fort,

For feral football in the dirt,

Until the darkness calls a halt;

And then we trot across the scree,

Past moonlit dewpond, all serene,

To celebrate the DOGGY TREE,

Each Christmastide a gladsome scene,

With bauble, bell and glittered card,

All pendant-hung and tree-top starred,

And there we read from my dear leader,
"Merry Christmas to all our Readers."

In memory of my dear dog, Basil; always missed but never more so than at the end of the old, and beginning of the new year; Basil wrote this some 10 years ago for www.footballpoets.org, in his role as official mascot of the Stroud Football Poets.

1914-1918: And Now For The Final Cost:

(With thanks to Crispin Thomas and Johnny Fluffypunk)

Arsenal 3 Aston Villa 1

Barnsley 4 Blackburn Rovers 2

Birmingham City 2 Blackpool 3

Bolton Wanderers 1 Bradford City 9

Derby County 6 Brentford 7

Brighton and Hove Albion  5 Bristol City 5

Bristol Rovers 3 Bury 7

Burnley 5 Cardiff City 0

Chelsea 6 Clapton Orient 4

Coventry City 6 Crystal Palace 4

Bradford Park Avenue 2 Everton 7

Exeter City 6 Fulham 0

Grimsby Town 1 Huddersfield Town 5

Hull City 4 Liverpool 6

Luton Town 3 Manchester City 9

Manchester United 8 Middlesborough 7

Millwall 5 Newcastle United 9

Newport County 1 Northampton Town 1

Norwich City 6 Nottingham Forest 2

Notts County 2 Oldham Athletic 0

Plymouth Argyle 7 Portsmouth 0

Preston North End 10 Queens Park Rangers 0

Reading 9 Sheffield United 2

Southampton 4 Southend United 10

Stockport County 9 Stoke City 0

Sunderland 0 Swansea 0

Stalybridge Celtic 0 Swindon Town 6

Sheffield Wednesday 3 West Bromwich Albion 2

West Ham United 7 Wolverhampton Wanderers 0

Watford 3 Tottenham Hotspur 14

Football Time

Football Time



I was never
 that close to my Dad,

He'd had a bad war in the Chindits,

And 
fighting behind Japanese lines


Gave him
 twenty years of 
mood swings


And irrational
 bursts of unpredictable
 temper,

But one Sunday 
afternoon
 after the pub,

Out the back on the lawn,

He taught me 
how 
to trap the ball,

How to kill it stone dead,

How to use your brain and body


Together
 in 
one movement


And so control 
the world.

And when I played
 in the street,

I found that if 
I dropped my shoulder


And wriggled
 my hips,


I had a natural 
untaught body swerve,

I could go past players
 as if they weren't there,

I could get
 to the bye-line


And put the ball


Onto the centre forward's
 head;

And when I see
 a match 
today


At a big stadium
 or on a recreation ground,

And a player has a number 7
on his back

(Like me and like my dad),

And he traps
 the ball, wriggles his hips,


Beats the wing-back 
and crosses the ball,

Then my Dad's alive again,

On our back lawn again,

And I'm 5 again,

And that's why I like football:

                                     It plays tricks
with time.