On the day I met Shaun Goater, I realised I had met

a living legend of Blue persuasion,

one who ranked with Colin Bell, Peter Barnes,

Uve Rossler, Asa Hartford and Bert Trautmann

as the hand I wanted to shake for being themselves

when placing the blue shirt above all in the name of the Kippax

and the beauty in despair of being an exiled Citizen.

 

From the first game away at Birmingham City,

a bus journey from Selly Park, from where soon

a picture of Joe Corrigan would look down

from the peeling wallpaper, taken from Shoot Magazine

and joined very soon by a black and white picture of Johann Cryuff,

into town with my Grandfather

and dad, the price of a ticket to ride ten pence and watching

the gathering crowds from my lowly vantage point,

I was hooked upon this team of flair

and perpetual desperation, of being second best

one year and then for the next thirty being starved

of everything except the meagre crumb of daylight

and the loyalty of a young boy who went against the grain

wherever he lived, the devoted Blue who stood

in the crowd at Macclesfield and argued with Peter Swales.

 

On the day I met Shaun Goater, his hand enveloped mine

with ease, this legend in Blue

had shook my small outstretched palm

and grinned in way that you could only love

as he looked down upon me and my lad

staring up at him in awe and silence.

Ruffling his hair and my lad shyly turning away

in embarrassment of the fuss made,

the dry dusty day in Mansfield only served notice

of why put up expensive art on the walls

when a picture of Shaun Goater genuinely smiling at a fan

is worth any copy of the fake Mona Lisa smile.

 

Ian D. Hall 2015