More Than A Match Poem by Kevin Carney
More Than A Match
The day of all days…
The people came.
The cries all over Scotland…
Painted faces, fever pitched…
Down from the highlands…
And as far as the sea…
As if William Wallace,
had summoned them there…
All over they came.
It’s twice a year…
The whistle blows,
it’s the start of a clan war…
Celtic and Rangers…
Instead of a spear and a sword…
It’s a football…
The screams and cheers.
The jeers and shouts so serious…
It’s all that the fans can bear…
The colors, its all for the show.
Two armies of eleven…
Pride and tradition,
it’s much more than a game.
Mention religion, the tempers flare….
A war of the pitch…
A war of words…
Even at times,
the blood of warriors spilt on the pitch….
The win is much more than that…
The winner the victor…
The loser so vanquished…
Catholics and Protestants under one roof…
So Christian and so far apart…
The disdain of each,
fermented over the centuries…
The swords have vanished…
Are we not now civilized?
This poem has not been translated into any other language yet.
I would like to translate this poem
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8/28/2026 9:15:10 PM # rel_20260827T145718Z_a0f1bd3
A nice blend of history war and sport. I also have often watched the gathering crowds with emotion and joy in the heart. Being a Canterbury crusader fan, a close fought match between the Crusaders and Highlanders from Dunedin, both major South Island New Zealand teams and a Crusader win in a close match is awesome. Painted faces in team colours awesome then to watch favourite players from both teams play pivotal rolls in strip playing for the nation as the mighty All Blacks. It does not get better. Sport often may often achieve what war and politics constantly fail to come close to. A meeting of nations on the favoured field of sport.