Sports Poets Society

https://thesefootballtimes.co/2019/04/17/the-legacy-of-charlie-george-arsenals-rambunctious-hometown-hero/ 17/04/2019 - by WILL SHARP When we pack onto the terraces of the grounds we call home and stand shoulder-to-shoulder, singing our hearts out in hope of inspiring to victory the 11 lucky souls clad in the same colours as ours, what we’re really saying is: ‘I’d give anything to be out there; playing.’ That is why, as magical as it is to witness an exotic, bronze-skinned, Michelangelo-sculpted, fortune-fetching import take to the pitch to play for your little old club, there remains nothing quite like the pride of seeing a local lad playing for the team you both adore. As of the late-60s and into the mid-70s, there was one long-haired cockney in particular who routinely gifted the fans of Arsenal that uniquely prideful stomach flutter, felt only while watching one of their own take to the pitch intent on living out the dream that, not unlike the subject of their unerr...

https://www.thesun.co.uk/sport/football/3115383/arsenal-charlie-george-legend/ Boyhood Gooner went from a fan on the terraces to helping his beloved club secure their first league and FA Cup double Phil Thomas The Sun - 17 Mar 2017 HE was the original Cockney Rebel. The man whose name still brings a smile and a warm glow to Arsenal faces. The guy who took laid back to new levels with his flat out celebration at hitting that famous 1971 FA Cup-winning goal, as he waited for his team-mates to haul him from the turf. Yet the man who was anything but, whenever confronted by anything approaching authority. Charlie George. Maverick, causer of mayhem and magician. All in the same body. Charlie George was a rebel but  a magician at the same time Credit: Getty Images For every flash of genius there was a flash of temper. Like the time he headbutted Kevin Keegan or flicked the Vs at Derby fans after one goal at the Baseball Ground. Keep u...

http://en.espn.co.uk/football/sport/story/121993.html Jon Carter - ESPN November 19, 2011 Charlie George holds aloft the FA Cup (© PA Photos) Tall, strong, powerful in the air and a good passer , Arsenal legend Charlie George was an entertainer on and off the pitch who became an instant hero and the darling of Highbury in the early 1970s. Described as ''A bona fide Cockney rebel '' by journalist Jon Wilde , George, like many footballers of the 1970s, was a rough diamond and someone who courted controversy wherever he went . His many bust-ups with managers, players and fans saw him loved and hated in equal measure, but ultimately his combative personality would see him only ever play one game for England. Born and brought up in Islington, deep in Arsenal territory, George was only five when he made his first trip to Highbury to see the Gunners play. An immediate convert to football, he would stand on the terraces cheering on his side for 1...

https://arsenal.vitalfootball.co.uk/big-time-charlie/ 15th June 2008 at 6:59pm Written by: TIM STILLMAN As the series of Arsenal’s pioneers moves apace into the seventies, there is one character that simply cannot be ignored. He would arrive into the first team very fittingly in 1969, as Woodstock and a tragic incident at a Rolling Stones gig , (where Hell’s Angels had been hired for security and a crush killed many Stones’ fans ) had bought the curtain down on the 60s age of innocence. The quickfire deaths of Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix that year had curtailed the insularity of a seemingly consequence free environment. Illusions were being shattered, the flower children were experiencing comedown. Arsenal had been utterly useless for the best part of fifteen years. Then along came Charlie. Frederick Charles George was born in Holloway in Islington in October 1950 . He grew up supporting his local club Arsenal, who he followed home and away. The young George atten...