Unbooked It would be Stanley Matthews’s ninety-ninth birthday: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Stanley_Matthews(1953_FA_Cup_Final).jpg The first Cup Final I saw was the Preston North End/West Brom game in 1954, on our neighbour’s tiny flickering black-white-grey-and-interference TV set, but I heard all about 1953: https://youtube/watch?v=NgPfwYqhmA0 Then in 1966 I found Alan Ross’s poem, a bit precious in places but worth reading all through: Not often con brio, but andante, andante, horseless, though jockey-like and jaunty, Straddling the touchline, live margin not out of the game, nor quite in, Made by him green and magnetic, stroller Indifferent as a cat dissembling, rolling A little as on deck, till the mouse, the ball, slides palely to him, And shyly, almost with deprecatory cough, he is off. Head of a Perugino, with faint flare Of the nostrils, as though Lipizzaner-like, he sniffed at the air, Finding it good beneath him, he draws Defenders towards him, the ball a bait They refuse like a poisoned chocolate, retreating, till he slows his gait To a walk, inviting the tackle, inciting it. At last, unrefusable, dangling the ball at the instep He is charged – and stiffening so slowly It is rarely perceptible, he executes with a squirm Of the hips, a twist more suggestive than apparent, that lazily disdainful move toreros term a Veronica – it’s enough. Only emptiness following him, pursuing some scent Of his own, he weaves in towards, not away from, fresh tacklers, Who, turning about to gain time, are by him harried, pursued not pursuers. Now gathers speed, nursing the ball as he cruises, Eyes judging distance, noting the gaps, the spaces Vital for colleagues to move to, slowing a trace, As from Vivaldi to Dibdin, pausing, and leisurely, leisurely, swings To the left upright his centre, on hips His hands, observing the goalkeeper’s spring, heads rising vainly to the ball’s curve Just as it’s plucked from them; and dispassionately Back to his mark he trots, whistling through closed lips. Trim as a yacht, with similar lightness - of keel, of reaction to surface – with salt air Tanned, this incomparable player, in decline fair to look at, nor in decline either, Improving like wine with age, has come far – born to one, a barber, who boxed Not with such filial magnificence, but well. ‘The greatest of all time,’ meraviglioso, Matthews – Stoke City, Blackpool and England. Expressionless enchanter, weaving as on strings Conceptual patterns to a private music, heard Only by him, to whose slowly emerging theme He rehearses steps, soloist in the compulsions of a dream.
Posted on: Sat, 01 Feb 2014 07:55:02 +0000
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