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Lee Dixon’s Cliche Cabinet
When Lee Dixon opens his cliche cabinet,
We’re havin' it.
It was a game of two halves
The lad’s put in a shift
You couldn’t write this script, that’s a gift
Get in there my son, go on my boy
The phrases flow, sucked of joy
He pulls rabbits from hats
With consummate ease
He’s a mangled mouthed magician
Can’t you see?
His left foot’s just for standing ...
Wednesday 10th July 2024 11:07 am
Palace of Tears
In the fanfare seasons when we get spoiled,
delight openly weeps.
A change from the usual stress attacks,
brought on by a lack of clean sheets.
Not a tin pot, or F.A. Cup,
or division won in years.
Disappointment sits, stares, and lingers
behind sunken red eyes and blue tears.
Elegantly euphoric promotions,
and grandiose upsets,
take centre stage with stella...
Sunday 3rd March 2024 10:44 am
Fever dream
The pitch so green
Expecting and clean
If only you knew
The wars it had seen
Heroes and villains
Jesters and kings
Death and betrayal
Of dreams so frail
Hunting the treble
Striving to revel
Flowing with the current
While slaying the giant
Believing the impossible
While discarding the implausible
Hoping, knowing and sewing
...
Wednesday 24th January 2024 10:09 am
Can Bing Win the Next World Cup (or Euros or Afcon or the Asian Cup)?
A.I. is a saviour and the new soccer sleuth,
here to solve online searches for footballing truth.
So, is the Golden Boot made of real gold?
Can a 47-year-old be trusted to play well in goal?
Did Hungary once feature Bela Lugosi?
Does just turning up get you a World Cup trophy?
How did Scotland qualify for the Euros?
Will there be more dancing in the streets of M...
Tuesday 19th December 2023 3:03 pm
Keep Football Out of The Bedroom
A tense game played out at top volume.
Weeds three feet high,
make tidy play almost impossible.
A pass back short, away from the defender.
A collective lunge,
the ball skids high over our keeper.
Next thing I know I’m flat on the floor,
water flying, books, electronics,
in upended uproar.
My desperate kick to save one for the team,
caused me to cras...
Monday 2nd October 2023 10:08 am
Quality Punditry
Lack of quality in the final third,
is the one phrase I wish I’d never heard.
Trotted out by pundits lost for words,
the useful and useless so casually blurred.
Quality player, quality ball,
Peter please stop, we’ve heard them all.
When City don't score, they hardly ever win,
Michael, cheers for stating the bleeding obvious thing.
Why if a player hits the ball too...
Thursday 1st June 2023 11:36 am
The Bottom Line
Euro bosses and the Premier League
Have prostituted the game we love
To watch on the BBC and Sky TV,
Collapsed on the sofa with footie fatigue.
As our goalie dons his sponsored gloves,
They switch us to adverts from Bet 365,
“What are the odds, now, that Leeds will survive?”
What price will be paid for Leeds going down,
In gate receipts and player recruitment?
...
Wednesday 24th May 2023 8:06 am
These Boys
For all the Sunderland fans out there... Aw, just me then! 😆
(one last push)
Hold on!
Passing
Movement
Wanting the ball?
This definitely
Isn't Sunderland at all!
Youth and vigour
Playing as a TEAM!
Where's the journeymen
And the greedy has-beens?
These are just younguns
They can't do owt
Especially now that
Ross ain't about!
Hold on
What's...
Wednesday 10th May 2023 12:38 pm
England, low tide
All the fuckin’ country
is tense about some dead duck football game
tonight at 8 pm (or so I’m told).
The sea it slinked away but turned again
and stealthily manoeuvres to reclaim
the mudflats populated by the clumsy
clumps of seals. They loiter, lolled
like slack balloons, like lard
collapsing down to chip fat on the hob.
But we, we sit up straight: our sofa, st...
Tuesday 10th August 2021 10:14 am
The Pride
The Pride
Huzzah!
This old and gummy English lion
Feeding on the tears of little girls.
Finding its bravery in packs
Of like-minded scavengers
Who prowl and growl
And claim a foul
For every perceived slight
In history.
Huzzah! Hurrah!
We won a contest
Prejudiced by racist taunts
And sieg-Heil accusations
By the Nazis
Towards the reconciled.
...Friday 2nd July 2021 3:12 pm
Outside Right
There used to be a game called soccer
At the touchline kids could stand
A haze of heroes 'mid a floodlight glare
Made it the best sport in the land
Then moneymen and bookies took over
The spectacle got stained by money
For off-shore agents and asset-strippers
It became the land of milk and honey
Players lost touch with the public
Fans turned into mere units of ...
Thursday 30th April 2020 11:21 am
A ROUGH DIAMOND
A ROUGH DIAMOND
(For Norman Hunter 1943-2020)
His name always evokes a smile
On the faces of footballers
Schooled on the uneven battlefields
Of a different era.
Days of the enthusiastic header,
Demolition shoulder,
Iron obstruction
And scything tackle.
Even those who carry no torch
For Leeds United or England
Today nod in respect
For a player who did as asked
And fulfilled hi...
Saturday 18th April 2020 1:12 pm
Why I went back
Why I went back
A posthumous poem in the voice of Walter Tull – 28.04.1888 to 25.03.1918
Until you’ve been under fire
hunkered down in some funk hole
you’ll never know terror, the horror
or the damage to the soul
that just one barrage can do,
before you ever hear the whistle’s blast
that, sadly it’s true
for all too many,
signals this’ll be your last.
So...
Friday 17th January 2020 6:44 am
The beautiful game
It’s only a game
This beautiful game.
There was nothing he liked more than a kick-around with a ball
Down the park or the reccie with his mates
He’d stay out til dark and his mum would moan he was late for his tea.
The lads swapped football stickers and wore team shirts for PE
And when he got the latest home kit for Christmas he was delighted.
Okay there was that time tha...
Monday 16th July 2018 2:51 pm
Our Lions
Take down the flags
Wind in the bunting
It's not our time
We know it's not coming
Or shop fronts and homes
Will soon seem empty
But the sea of St George
Will be a glorious memory
Hold your head high
As echoes of cheers ring loud
Faith restored;
You've done us all proud
This time was different
You wrote your own story
A summer of hope
A dalliance with glory
You've brought us passion
...
Thursday 12th July 2018 11:50 am
It's not easy being green.
This is an absolute joke.
Where’s the centre-half, gone for a smoke?
It’s looking like we’re gonna get beat,
I’ve kissed good bye to my clean sheet,
midges in my eyes,
dog shit on my feet-
It’s not easy being green.
Nose’s fucked and cheekbone too
got kicked in the face
from that little number 2
rest of the team’s got nothing to do
I’ve saved about hundred, bu...
Friday 18th May 2018 12:42 pm
OINO
Anelka,
The Ameobi’s,
Big Sam Allardyce
Augustine Okocha
So good they named him twice
Bury, Bulgaria and Bavaria
And everywhere in between
The Battle of Burnden Park
The definition of a team
Stan Collymore
Getting floored
And Campo’s curly wig
Our Danes; Henrik, Per, Bo
Claus, Michael and Stig
England internationals
French Word Cup winners
Getting le...
Wednesday 7th February 2018 11:12 am
SONNET FOR ROONEY
SONNET FOR ROONEY
So I gets this call from Gareth Southgate
And he's laying it on like marmalade,
Saying come back Rooney you've got it made
Playing for Everton, O what a state!
I thought your ambition was to be great!
England's not a problem don't be afraid,
At Goodison you'll always make the grade,
So get those three lions back on you mate.
But I though...
Thursday 24th August 2017 8:37 pm
The Football
Who would have guessed that a small tree
could be so vicious. All day you had kicked
the new football back and forth against
the gable of the red brick terrace and
not even the promise of ice cream could
coax you away, until the Blackthorn spoilt the game.
That’s when you ran back, holding the thing
with your thumb pressed white against its skin.
You begged me for some...
Wednesday 5th July 2017 6:59 pm
Football's problem - a tee-total football fan's message to UEFA
We've heard sectarian and racist hate
seen a governing body in a sad old state
fans forced to flee flying fists in fear
but football's problem is not just beer.
We've Neo-Nazis, ultras and yobs
most whom must hold decent jobs.
Some come just for the fight I hear
so football's problem can't be just beer.
We over-pay schoolboy prima-donnas
to create cheap imitation Maradonas
for a si...
Wednesday 15th June 2016 12:36 pm
On Top!
The Foxes are top of the league
It is all down to Richard III.
They're showing no signs of fatigue
The Foxes are top of the league!
Those foreigners watch with intrigue
It's Leicester, this seems so absurd
The Foxes are top of the league?
Is it all down to Richard III?
Saturday 2nd April 2016 9:49 pm
Poem for Germany
Deutschland, Deutschland
über the moon
you won’t be sober
any time soon.
Sunday 13th July 2014 10:57 pm
the knock
Should have been your boy
back from the game
bag of fish and chips
grin as wide as the Mersey
drunk on youth and sunshine
still living every pass shot tackle
as he settles down in front of the box
him and the old man each with a can
to watch it all over on Match Of The Day.
Instead, it was coppers
neighbours, friends, the sad-eyed priest
it was sorry for your...
Tuesday 22nd April 2014 5:34 pm
The Football
David Coldwell reads The Football at the 2013 Derwent Poetry Festival.
Monday 11th November 2013 5:32 pm
Then the muse of good mood arrived ...
Great...
Tuesday 14th May 2013 4:52 pm
AO'kay
After today’s meeting with The Autistic Organisation we’re proud to announce we’ll be working very closely with Richard and his team in building the Manchester branch with projects at the Royal Exchange, at OpenMind events, and an OpenMind vs AO charity football match all on the horizon.
Tuesday 10th July 2012 2:17 am
Chelsea Zen Buddhist Haiku
Life starts at the bridge
the End is not the journey
the goals of Juan Mata
Juan to think of for Chelski fans.
Thursday 2nd February 2012 12:14 am
Wembley Woes
courtly choreography
of football ballet
Barcelona teasing
Man United wheezing
English energy
wiped
by Spanish skill
cbt
Sunday 29th May 2011 5:32 pm
Football
When you wake up right in the middle of a cold cold night
and there's no such a thing as a warm blue light
with hardly anyone around
yet you're still loved
your dreams-
justified
it really seems
your life is made of dreams
we breathe, neither awake nor asleep
our world falling apart, yet there's football on TV
with all there is to come - just how shall an...
Sunday 5th December 2010 11:51 am
What a Wonderful Game
(This one's for Ray, and all the others out there)
Brazil in Mexico;
Bonetti’s blunder and Gazza’s tears;
Pele, Eusebio, Cruyff;
North Korea, when they were plucky, not dangerous and mad;
The often-absent Tartan army;
Beckenbauer’s grace and Zidane’s rage;
Argentina! Rattin’s dismissal, Maradona’s revenge;
Can Drogba carry Africa’s flag?
Wembley, the ...
Friday 11th June 2010 9:08 am
IDOL
Not much rain that month they say - May of nineteen-forty-six;
the ache of war, still in the bones, where Cregagh boys kicked tries
down at Malone and dodged the sixes from the next-door cricket pitch.
Wednesday, the twenty-second, an ordinary Belfast day,
but some alignment of the spheres, some sorcery, conspiracy of Gods,
some fate; a child was born, a boy, blue eyed, da...Wednesday 8th April 2009 1:28 am
Singing Loud and proud!
Singing loud and proud!
It's Saturday's game
we go away on the train
spirits not dampened
by the torrential rain
Arrive on their patch
like lions in a pack
sometimes attacking
sometimes attacked
Moving on together
that tribal mentality
I know its not right
but it is the reality
Finishing our beers
...
Tuesday 19th August 2008 6:27 pm
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