There he was yesterday, punching air in the empty stands - the only Birmingham City fan with a win to celebrate after his team's 3-0 defeat to Liverpool on Saturday.
Jonny Hurst, a faithful and most eloquent supporter of the Blues, had just been chosen as Bard of the Boots, or soccer's first £10,000 chants laureate, as the post is officially called. The announcement made him look even happier than the Queen's poet laureate, Andrew Motion, an Arsenal fan whose team won at the weekend.
What helped swing it for Hurst, 37, was the fervent rhyming of his singalong ode to the squad, especially Stan Lazaridis, to the tune of Tammy Wynette's Stand By Your Man:
_ (But) Stan is the man
His shirt they try to cling to
As he weaves down the wing to
Find Forssell with precision
Hurst has travelled nearly as far in support of his players as Coleridge's Ancient Mariner or Homer's Odysseus. A home match means a 264-mile round trip for him from his home in Wanstead, east London.
But above all the judges chose him because he writes chants for rival teams with equal facility. For Aston Villa, for example, to the tune of Barry Manilow's Copacabana:
At the Villa, at Aston Villa
The greatest club west of Manila
At the Villa, at Aston Vi-lla
Football and passion
All ranges of fashion
This makes him a truly versatile poet for special occasions - like Motion and other wandering minstrels through the ages.
"He is a real find," Motion said yesterday. "All the judges were of one mind in choosing him."
Hurst beat 1,500 entrants for the post, more than 100 times as many as applied for Motion's job last time it fell vacant. Most of them, like him, not only sing chants but write them and try to get football crowds to adopt them.
The chants laureate has to watch matches and compose a selection of chants reflecting key moments throughout the 2004-05 season - "a football fan's dream", Nic Gault, of the post's sponsors, Barclaycard, said yesterday.
"The breadth of the work that Jonny submitted was breathtaking."
Hurst said: "I have always enjoyed singing and composing football chants for Birmingham City because it's such a massive part of the game."
