Midday in sunny Glasgow on September 10, 2016. Tom Rogic strolls on to the perfectly manicured pitch at Celtic Park. The occasion is the Old Firm derby. The ground is a cauldron of noise. The referee blows his whistle to start the game.
Over the course of the next hour, random people take to Twitter and attempt to describe watching Tom Rogic to their followers…to the world.
I notice that many of these tweets start with the same three words, “Tom Rogic is.”
I begin to copy and paste “Tom Rogic is” tweets in chronological order and it starts taking the shape of a poem.
At 1.10pm, in the 54th minute, Tom Rogic walked off the perfectly manicured pitch at Celtic Park.
The result. A found poem of football fan consciousness.
Wonderful stuff, Athas. The man could not have written better himself. Nearly as good as Tom Leonard’s Crack
cutsiny thi box
cross cumzthi centre hoff
a right big animul
crack
doon goes Dalgleesh
ref waves play on
nay penalthi
so McNeill complainzty im
oot cumzthi book
tipicl
wan mair upfurthi luj
One day I will translate it for you
Hi Roy, thanks for the complimentary feedback and for Tom Leonard’s Crack. I got down to the second last line “out comes the book typical” …but you’ll have to translate the last line for me. Cheers.
The last line reflects the widespread belief in referees being members of a Masonic conspiracy against the Celts, hence One more up for the (Orange) lodge.
There is another story about refs being members of the legal profession. One such queried how supporters knew he was a lawyer, because every time he appeared they sang, ‘Who’s the barrister in the black?’