> A.L. Lloyd > Songs > The Football Match

The Football Match

[ Roud 1291 ; Ballad Index Wt223 ; trad.]

A.L. Lloyd sang The Football Match on the Riverside LP Champions and Sporting Blades, and in 1998 on the Topic CD Bold Sportsmen All. He commented in the liner notes:

This exciting song has more to it than meets the eye. It is no ordinary game when players are lightheartedly stabbed with penknives. Probably the song describes one of those rough saturnalian sports once common in England on Shrove Tuesday. In a few places it is still the custom, on that day, for the rough lads of rival villages to chase a ball across the countryside and through the streets, regardless of hacked shins, bloody noses, broken heads and shattered windows. This version comes from the Pillinger family of Swindon, Wiltshire.

Lyrics

A.L. Lloyd sings The Football Match

It's of a football match, most delightful to be seen,
Of twenty-two young rippling lads who played on Salisbury Plain.
Oh, the ribbons and the favours they was fluttering on'er the plain;
Here's a health unto those rippling lads, and so the game went on.

Chorus (after each verse):

You rippling lads, hooray!
You're sure to win the day,
And the prize, you will carry it
All away, all away.

The ball it has been thrown up and the game it did begin;
My God, how they did kick it, more like devils than like men.
They're having such a motion in rushing the ball along,
Here's a health unto those rippling lads, and so the game went on.

The ball it being booted up, the goal it did draw nigh,
Young Williams stuck a penknife into young Jackson's thigh.
He lashed out at the lively ball, to score was his intent,
Young Williams missed his aim, he did, and through the goal he went.