portrait of a gaelic football team of character

 

The Ballad Of Crettyard

There's a football team in Erin

Not known for grace or style

Whose ruthlessness and depravity

Is mixed with female guile.

The girls of Crettyard

Are famed in song and story.

There football, tis not hard

So much as it is gory.

If a linesman goes a missing

Or a referee's been debawled

It's not so much a question

As a certainty who's involved.

But the girls of Crettyard

Will always stay the course

With a dollop of sheer savagery

And a smidgen of brute force.

The ladies of Ballsbridge

Arrived one day to play.

Crettyard marched onto the field

And the ladies ran away.

Then Athy came to face them

Who were rough enough themselves

And quickly fell to weeping:

"Mammy, is this hell?"

Or the glamour girls of Kerry

With skills beyond compare

Who limped home on broken ankles

Missing tufts of golden hair.

Their roll of honour lives in infamy

On every Gaelic pitch.

There's Sheila Na Giggs Nic Pull Yer Breasts

And Caitlin Og Mac Bitch

And sundry other heroes

With names too crude to call

Who live for Sunday football

And vote for Fianna Fail.

They've been in many championships

But they very rarely win

Because great big softy referees

Think fouling is a sin.

And all across the midlands

When children are abed

It's not the bogeyman they fear

But Crettyard they dread.

Still all good things come to an end

Even a life of crime

And Crettyard will meet their maker

At the game of life full time.

They'll troop up to the pearly gates

while Saint Peter says: "No way."

"Let them in ye twit," says Michael,

"That's Crettyard GAA."

And when the great Apocalypse

Rolls through all creation,

And demons swarm about the walls

To threaten heaven's station,

God will say to Gabriel,

With the battle going hard:

"It looks like the devil's winning.

Better send in Crettyard."