Twelve months ago, we received this photo from a keen Adam Lindsay Gordon admirer … and Richmond Football Club supporter, so it seems appropriate to post again following the team’s third premiership in four years.
Gordon was good at sports and would have played football as a youth while at Cheltenham College and Worcester Grammar School in England. However, he preferred horses, steeplechase riding and hunting.
The following is an excerpt from one of Adam Lindsay Gordon’s poems, Fytte IV of Ye Wearie Wayfarer:
No game was ever yet worth a rap
For a rational man to play,
Into which no accident, no mishap,
Could possibly find its way.
If you hold the willow, a shooter from Wills
May transform you into a hopper,
And the football meadow is rife with spills,
If you feel disposed for a cropper;
In a rattling gallop with hound and horse
You may chance to reverse the medal
On the sward, with the saddle your loins across,
And your hunter’s loins on the saddle;
In the stubbles you’ll find it hard to frame
A remonstrance firm, yet civil,
When oft as ‘our mutual friend’ takes aim,
Long odds may be laid on the rising game,
And against your gaiters level;
There’s danger even where fish are caught
To those who a wetting fear;
For what’s worth having must ay be bought,
And sport’s like life, and life’s like sport,
‘It ain’t all skittles and beer’.