The Tweeter Not The Song

A weird thing happened on deadline day (itself something of a forced construct) prior to the start of the EPL 2018/2019 season. Various verse-inclined wags started quoting Philip Larkin and matching lines from his poems to the mood of stories of the day on Twitter. As with most social media trends it was all over pretty quickly and, having begun as an amusing and original take on the spectacle soon degenerated into attention-seeking one-upmanship, but I’d be lying if I said that the best combinations did not raise a smile with me.

This blog is, of course, no stranger to the fusing of the poetical and the popular as our infrequent Match Reports prove and the 280 character platform is perfect for fast-moving, collaborative humour. Hashtags /metadata tags can take off as quickly as a new chant breaking out and being adopted by an entire section at a ground. The tune everyone will likely know and the words will be pertinent to an issue of the day on the pitch or in the boardroom. Whether they will last however is another matter.

I have no doubt someone will try and recreate this Larkin moment on the next deadline day but my guess is that by then football-Twitter will have moved on.

Leonard Apple.