Thursday, June 12, 2008

Twenty years


Twenty years! Ah now, Caithlin, it’s hard to believe!
That match still looms fertile and strong all the same.
It’s many a thicket-hedged laneway that we’ve
Meandered in hope since that wonderful game.

Is it really so long since we turned that first page,
Not knowing if it were novella or tome.
Chapter on chapter upon the world’s stage,
New York, Ibaraki, Stuttgart and Rome.

The goal is indelibly etched in our hearts,
But what of the seventy eight minutes still left.
Lineker’s chances from Beardsley’s short darts?
Robson appalled at the scale of the theft?

We’ve come close in the years since that first epic match,
But never quite scaled the dizzying height
Of the ball striking net from young Houghton’s thick thatch,
As the new boys in green beat the old boys in white.