Almanac (Footy) Poetry: The footy

December 17, 2020 by 1 Comment

 

Kick to Kick football

 

 

 

Taking it in turns

to run a kick’s length ahead,

brother Dan and I

short-passed and marked

the brand new red leather Sherrin

all the way up Robin Hood Road.

 

 

Neither of us had dared to believe

the prize we’d won for filling out a coupon

to say why we liked White Wings flour

in ten words or less, would be 

an actual footy.

Plastic, we assumed.

 

 

But Jack O’Sullivan the grocer

calmly reached beneath the till

and presented us with 

real leather and laces.

We each signed

and shot out the door.

 

 

Turning right on the home stretch

down Wallis Avenue,

Dan positioned himself to be 

the receiver outside our house

so he could be the first

to rush in and show Mum.

 

 

Bill Wootton

 

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About

Bill lives in Hepburn Springs, barracks for Collingwood and organises a weekly poem to be published in The Local, either by himself or by any of the local poets, some of whom meet regularly.

Comments

  1. Dan Wootton says
    December 19, 2020 at 11:20 am

    It was actually a RossFaulkner, not a Sherrin
    I don’t think we can take credit for coming up with the White Wings appraisal
    I’m confident that it was Mum that came up with the words
    – she was so stoked as “she never won anything, it was always Dad that did the winning
    I did indeed position myself to be first to run in and show Mum
    – paybacks for when Bill sprinted up Marshall Street ahead of me in 1966
    Back then the prize was our first decimal coin as change from our bus fare
    We were hoping to get a five cent and a one cent
    but we were given an old sixpence and a shiny one cent – with a possum in lieu of a roo!

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