SUSAN ROOME has never played football and has not watched the team play - but from tomorrow the York writer is Scarborough Football Club's poet-in-residence.

Writing under the pseudonym of Vesuvia - the name with which she answers her phone at her home off School Lane in Heslington - she has penned her first piece for tomorrow's Conference match against Carlisle United at the McCain Stadium.

Laminated copies of Song For Scarborough will be for sale at £3.50 - more expensive than the £2 club programme, The Boro Review - and all profits will go to club funds.

Its Corinthian-spirited lyrics read like this:

Scarborough Seagulls

Scarborough Seagulls

Altogether in the match

Where's no battle

There's no victory

We must win upon our patch.

Before the game, match announcer Dave Metcalfe will urge fans to sing the song to the tune of Helmsley from the current Methodist hymn book, Hymns & Psalms.

"I originally set it to the Welsh tune Cwm Rhondda, but they said it couldn't possibly be that," said Susan. "It had to be English or preferably Yorkshire. I searched around and found Helmsley, which is the tune to Lo, He Comes With Clouds Descending - a good tune."

Will she go out on to the pitch to conduct the singing? "I hope not! The plan is for me to sing it through once on the Tannoy system, and then for the fans to join in. It's their song," she said.

Susan, who was born at Hutton Buscel, near Scarborough, and has lived in Heslington for 16 years after retiring from teaching law and politics in London, has been writing poetry for 20 years, during which time ten per cent of her 700 poems have been published.

The idea of becoming a football club's poet-in-residence came about through her brother-in-law.

"He'd seen Barnsley's poet-in-residence, Ian McMillan, and thought of me as being suitable to do it too, and he suggested Scarborough. I contacted Stephen Graham, the secretary and commercial director, earlier this month and the club agreed to it. He didn't ask to look at my work. He accepted me on trust," Susan said.

The plan is to do five poems a season, leading to the publication of a booklet for sale, and Susan has started to keep cuttings of Scarborough's progress and has availed herself of the club's A-Z, learning of the sterling deeds of the team's all-conquering centre-half, Harry Dunn. "I'm writing this little poem about him. It's called The Legend," she said.

Her own sporting prowess was as captain of the first hockey team at school, playing in goal, traditionally the nuttiest position. "Well, I am nutty!" she said, laughing at the memory.

Now Vesuvia - her name derives from her meeting her muse, who sparked off a poem about a volcano - could become the latest legend in the history of Scarborough Football Club.

Updated: 10:05 Friday, January 28, 2005