Football at Slack Notes

‘Football at Slack’ by Ted Hughes is an image-rich poem that talks about a few
men who were playing football on a hill. It is taken from his 1979 collection of
poems called Remains of Elmet. The football in the first section is their source of
merriment. However, in the next section, they start to enjoy the rhythm of rain as
the poet captures the momentary beauty of nature in this poem. The images of
the clouds thronging the sky, the sudden starting of rain, and at last, the sun
peeping through the clouds and this makes the poem an interesting one to read
and imagine about.

‘Football at Slack’ by Ted Hughes consists of eight stanzas. Some stanzas of the

poem are short and some are comparably long. The overall poem is in free verse.
There isn’t any regularity in the line lengths of the poem. Like the stanzas, some
lines of the poem are comparably long. Whereas some lines are contracted for
the sake of emphasizing the images or ideas present in those lines.

The poem starts with the description of a football game which is taking place
between two men's teams in a small village at Slack, somewhere in the hills. In
the first line the words 'plunging' and 'bareback' stand out as being unusual. They
might both be connected to horses. 'Plunging' suggests the way a horse moves,
almost rolling up and down. 'Bareback' suggests the smooth rounded back of the
horse with a slight dip in the centre.  The poet is using these words metaphorically
— to describe the ups and downs of hills and valleys and the smooth tops of
rounded hills. The poet refers to the men dressed in bunting or bright color
jerseys. It is also a reference to their child-like spirit and spontaneity. Apart from
that, the poet refers to their flexibility and energy in the last line by the use of the
verb “bounce.” .The other feature of the first stanza is the number of 'b's':'
bunting', 'Bounced', and 'blown ball bounced'.  Alliteration is used usually to
draw attention to the idea of the constantly moving ball. In the 'blown
ball bounced,' the harsh b sound of the three words makes us focus on the ball
like the men who are putting all of their concentration into the game. It also
describes the sound the ball makes as it hits off the ground and players as it is
passed around.

In the second stanza, the first image presented is of the men jumping to head the
ball. The highly spirited men described by the phrase “merry-coloured” looked
like water if they were all moving or flowing in the same direction —like a steady
stream for they were following the movement of the ball up and down the field
and from side to side. The second image in this stanza is of the ball that went
downhill like the sudden gush of air.
In the third stanza, Hughes refers to the men running after the ball as rubbery
creatures. It seems that the football injected elasticity into those men. The ball is
likened to a person as it “jumped up” and he makes the men sound like the ball in
'rubbery', further suggesting that their movement is like bouncing. However, the
ball got stuck in a “gulf of treetops”. After seeing what had happened, they
became agitated and shouted at the ball together. But, without giving an ear to
their frustrations, the ball rolled down to the valley. The alliteration which ends
the stanza draws attention to the ball again: “the ball blew back.”
In the fourth stanza, Hughes quickly paints a new picture in the poem. While
those men were busy shouting at the ball, suddenly the wind started to blow and
clouds like stones gathered in the sky. The mood of the poem in this section
reflects the men’s state of mind after losing the ball. It seems as if the winds are
coming from “fiery holes in heaven “which refers to the breaks in the clouds from
where the red sun is shining through, and the winds are personified. Hughes
makes them sound like a great god who is piling clouds on the distant hills. Two
more images in the stanza make the picture more vivid. 'Mad oils' suggests that
the landscape is like an oil painting — although perhaps “mad” as everything from
the ball, the men are almost ‘mad,’ their excitement and heightened enthusiasm
is out of bounds. “The rain lowered a steel press,”
this gives a sense of the Mother Nature lowering the clouds and producing
terrible rain. It also gives the picture of the colour of the sky, a dark grey and the
force of the downpour creates a depressing mood.
In the fifth stanza, the poet captures how those men forgot about the ball and
started to enjoy the rainfall. Here, it seems that they were no longer mature men.
They were behaving, and playing just like little children. They were “washed and
happy”. However, the images referred to by “plastered” hair and “puddle glitter”
paint an interesting picture of their hair wet and damp and pressed down while
their kicks and jumps are throwing water from the small ponds of water like
glitter of water droplets being thrown around. The word bobbed again gives us
the image of water and the idea that the men are still cheerful. The words bobbed
and up give the idea of the men being above the water and surviving the heavy
downpour. This contrasts with the depressive weather from stanza four and
brightens the tone of the poem, which shows the men’s positive experience.
In the sixth stanza, Hughes presents a rain-drenched picture of the landscape. The
hill appeared to the poet as a “humped world”. The word humped refers to the
hilly setting and sank presents the idea that the world has disappeared
underneath the vast amount of water that has fallen. There is hyperbole in the
line, “And the valleys blued unthinkable”. The valleys turned blue for the clogged
water. At last, the poet refers to the “Atlantic depression” which was the cause of
the precipitation.
In the seventh stanza, the poet refers to their activity during the heavy downpour.
Here, the poet uses hyperbolic expressions to present their level of excitement.
The word leapt contrasts with sank as the men are above the water and that it is
not restraining their game play. ‘Bicycled’ also gives the impression that the men
are very active and that the rainfall is not detracting them from the enjoyment of
their game. The men are obviously still enjoying this positive experience even
though the weather is terrible. In the last stanza, Hughes ironically refers to the
sun’s sudden appearance. The golden holocaust is a metaphor for the sun. Lifting
the clouds edge personifies the sun, as if it is lifting a blanket to see something
interesting. This is effective as it contrasts with the previous damp weather. The
poet refers to the sun as a “golden holocaust”. The poet implies that as the rain
stopped and the sun started to appear in the sky, those men again returned to
reality. The child inside each person again faded away. The poet holds the sun
responsible for it. That’s why he uses “holocaust” as a reference to the sun’s
cruelty. The final two lines of the poem are different to the rest of the poem as
the weather has improved and is dry. This suggests that maybe the men’s
determination throughout their game has caused the sun to come out..
In conclusion, Ted Hughes poem Football at Slack conveys a positive experience
through the men’s enthusiasm and the untiring effort of the players during a
football match taking place in awful weather conditions. Hughes clever use of
techniques used to contrast the men’s positive attitude and the terrible weather.
The poet was also born and brought up in Yorkshire. The description of the place
seems like the poet had an association with this place. He might have played on
that hill slope and lost a football just like those men in the poem lost theirs. The
author uses a variety of imagery in the poem to help express the experience he
most likely had as a child of viewing a football game and he had penned it down
with such descriptive verbs and language that one could really imagine being in the
exact situation.