Yesterday morning, as I was queuing for a tea in SAC, a student asked me if I'd heard that Denis Law had died. I guess the young man asking the question was aware of my footballing allegiance. My sad answer was that I had heard the news and that Manchester in general was in muted mourning for one of her favourite sons, adopted of course. It was good to know that someone of a very different generation had heard of the great footballer.
And it put me in mind of using a poem about Denis in my classroom as a much younger teacher, back in England in the early eighties. The slight disappointment then was that although my classes sort of liked the poem, they didn't really appreciate the resonance attached to the name of the player and quite a few of the kids had never heard of him even back then. But around Crown Point in Denton, where we lived for several years when I was a teenager, it was guaranteed that everyone had some consciousness of Denis since The King's Head, the pub on one of the corners of the main road junction, opposite The Red Lion on another, bore his unmistakable features on the crest above the main entrance.
When we back there in December the crest had gone. Indeed, the building was no longer a pub, having been transformed in a very pleasant bistro. I popped in there for a very nice cuppa on my own one rainy day when Noi had gone out shopping with Jeanette. But that's by the by, just a fragment of the past and its glories and sadnesses being inevitably forgotten.
Just to try and help with a bit of remembering, here's the poem by Gareth Owen that featured in a few of my lessons. I normally don't record poems in full in this Far Place, but I'll make an exception for an old favourite that happens to say to say a lot about me as a little lad in its own way:
Denis LawI live at 14 Stanhope Street,
Me mum, me dad and me,
And three of us have made a gang,
John Stokes and Trev and me.
Our favourite day is Saturday;
We go Old Trafford way
And wear red colours in our coats
To watch United play.
We always stand behind the goal
In the middle of the roar.
The others come to see the game -
I come for Denis Law.
His red sleeves flap around his wrists,
He’s built all thin and raw,
But the toughest backs don’t stand a chance
When the ball’s near Denis Law.
He’s a whiplash when he’s in control,
He can swivel like an eel,
And twist and sprint in such a way
It makes defences reel.
And when he’s hurtling for the goal
I know he’s got to score.
Defences may stop normal men -
They can’t stop Denis Law.
We all race home when full time blows
To kick a tennis ball,
And Trafford Park is our back-yard,
And the stand is next door’s wall.
Old Stokesey shouts, “I’m Jimmy Greaves,”
And scores against the door,
And Trev shouts: “I’ll be Charlton,”
No comments:
Post a Comment