Football Fanatics

I'd tossed the coin,
the teams had chosen
and changed ends
when there she was:
tall, willowy, with mucky face,
a teenage lass with grubby pram
in which -- it soon transpired --
a grimy, grim-faced child
with grubby dummy in her mouth.
Small sister. Not 
a baby  and not yet visibly
revealed -- as she would be --
beneath the piled-up
objects in the pram.

They'd come to see their brother score a goal.

Ten minutes later he obliged.
As if by magic,
in big sister's hand:
a rattle -- not a baby's rattle,mark you!
One of those old football rattles
that you never see these days.
Its sound was of a flock of geese
at war with robot ducks.
A world of objects left the pram
on trajectories through the air.

And so for the duration of the match
she ran the line,
kept up with play
whilst pushing pram in one direction;
and pulling it the other,
always with one hand.
And all the time, both pram 
and sister bounced and lurched alarmingly
on the uneven turf.
And every time she whirled her rattle
round her head the pram was emptied
of its objects -- liberally provided
for that purpose,as I had
it told to me between the halves.

He loves his football,
sir, she said. Gets so excited,
so he do!