The Poetry of Scottish football

Date: 25th November 2024

Let’s be honest.  Most fans, while appreciating the beauty of Scottish football from time to time (other than when their team is passing the ball around their own box, then losing it and then conceding a preventable goal), don’t think in terms of players and poetry.  However, there is a thriving world of football poetry out there, with some clubs even having had direct links with local poets (St Johnstone used to have Jim Macintosh as their Poet in Residence). Jim is an award-winning Scottish poet and he was instrumental in putting together, in association with Nutmeg Magazine, an anthology of poetry to support Football Memories Scotland.  Called, “Mind the Time,” it is now sold out, but you may be able to find it available online.   With all proceeds going to Football Memories Scotland, this is/was a very worthwhile project.  With the recent death of St Johnstone’s best ever winger, Kenny Aird, Jim has penned a poem in his memory, which, with his permission, we reproduce below.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

THE ONE SEVEN

In Memory of  Kenny Aird

Standing with all our Fathers and all the other Faithful

under the floodlights, the hallowed grass of heroes

drenched in memories of every touch, tackle, save and goal.

And our hearts embraced the light and shade, of

times when Europe seemed closer than ever before,

when the big boys came to town, yet went home smaller.

From a bible of extraordinary in the quagmire of ordinary,

the names of our great Kings, recited off the programme

like the rites of passage generations learn. And mine?

The Saints that schooled SV Hamburg, Muirton Park, 29^th September, 1971:

Donaldson, Lambie, Coburn,

Rennie, Gordon, McPhee

Aird, Whitelaw, Connolly, Hall, Aitken

The dark blue night, frozen in time, endless in possibilities

bristling with fearless ambition, and everywhere in between

the one Seven, an Ormond boy if ever there was  – Kenny Aird.

The rose-tinted glasses of nostalgia sometimes fog reality yet

the passage of time has not faded the memory of him, of the

buzz of crowded anticipation every time he had the ball.

His fiery locks like a goal bound comet finding uncharted space

behind mountains of men, delivering the perfect cross – expecting

the admiration of his work to be my next fresh memory

Now and again, a new buzz starts up, miles away in a ground

for a different story, for another generation, but it’s not mine,

Instead, I will read again of the extraordinary and remember him

Jim Mackintosh

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Tags: Scottish fans