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NINIAN POETRY We've always felt that Ninian Park was a place of great poetry - a shrine to the Arts, if you will, where the subtle nuances of the spoken word are expounded and appreciated. Imagine our delight at finding confirmation of CCFC's literary standing with this plaintive piece of prose, penned by one of the Principality's premier poets, Dannie Abse. The Game DANNIE ABSE (born 1923) Follow the crowds to where the turnstiles click. The terraces fill. Hoompa, blares the brassy band. Saturday afternoon has come to Ninian Park and, beyond the goalposts, in the Canton Stand between black spaces, a hundred matches spark. Waiting, we recall records, legendary scores: Fred Keenor, Hardy, in a royal blue shirt. The very names, sad as the old songs, open doors before our time where someone else was hurt. Now like an injured beast, the great crowd roars. The coin is spun. Here all is simplified and we are partisan who cheer the Good, hiss at passing Evil. Was Lucifer offside? A wing falls down when cherubs howl for blood. Demons have agents: the Referee is bribed. The white ball smacked the crossbar. Satan rose higher than the others in the smoked brown gloom to sink on grass in a ballet dancer's pose. Again, it seems, we hear a familiar tune not quite identifiable. A distant whistle blows. Memory of faded games, the discarded years; talk of Aston Villa, Orient and the Swans. Half-time, the band played the same military airs as when The Bluebirds once were champions. Round touchlines the same cripples in their chairs. Mephistopheles had his joke. The honest team dribbles ineffectually, no one can be blamed. Infernal backs tackle, inside forwards scheme, and if they foul us need we be ashamed? Heads up! Oh for a Ted Drake, a Dixie Dean. 'Saved' or else, discontents, we are transferred long decades back, like Faust must pay the fee. The Night is early. Great phantoms in us stir as coloured jerseys hover, move diagonally on the damp turf, and our eidetic visions blur. God sign our souls! Because the obscure Staff of Hell rule this world, jugular fans have guessed the result half way through the second half and those who know the score just seem depressed. Small boys swarm the field for an autograph. Silent the Stadium. The crowds have all filed out. Only the pigeons beneath the roofs remain. The clean programmes are trampled underfoot and natural the dark, appropriate the rain Whilst, under lampposts, threatening newsboys shout. published in Presenting Welsh Poetry (Faber), 1959 cost: 10s 6d

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