Nomads' Poet Laureate

Most cricketers at our level spend the tea interval discussing football, cars, the physical attributes of passing women, the lack of physical attributes of their team-mates, occasionally even cricket.  Not the Nomads, though.  Last Sunday we had a very pleasant discussion about the Pastoral Poet, John Clare. It was felt that if there is a poet who represents the essence of Clapham Nomads, then it is Clare.  After all, the 19th Century versesmith shares several connections with the Clapham side;

East Northants/Stamford/Peterborough area connection - Yes
Epping Forest connection - Yes
Keen walker - Yes (Nomads have several of these, but in the hiking rather than the cricketing sense.)
Madness connection - Yes (but in Nomads' case this is arguably only moderate eccentricity when compared with some of the teams we play.)

Undoubtedly, some of Clare's lines will resonate with many Nomads players, e.g.;

"Into the nothingness of scorn and noise"

and (a slight adaptation here) - "The vast shipwreck of my life's teams."

In conclusion though, much as we are all admirers of the works of Clare, we do already have our own Poet Laureate at the club.  Not only does his surname, like the poet's, begin with a C, but he also tends to write on an explicitly cricketing theme.  Here is his best-known work which is on the subject of a team we used to play.  I have concealed the team's name to avoid causing offence and because some of them are a bit tasty.

"xxxx xxxx as a team,
They're not exactly the best I've seen.
The way they act, it makes me frown
'Cos they resemble a bunch of clowns.
They turned the game to utter shite,
This gang of pissheads dressed in white."