Max Boyce – The Outside-Half Factory Lyrics

Album on Live at Treorchy

The Outside-Half Factory Lyrics

I’ll tell you a story
’tis a strange and weird tale:
Of a factory in my valley
Not fed by road or rail
It’s built beneath the mountain
Beneath the coal and clay
It’s where we make the outside-halves
That’ll play for Wales one day
Down by the council houses
Where on a quiet day
You can hear the giant engines
Digging up the clay
No naked lights or matches
Where the raw material’s found
In the four-foot seams of outside-halves
Two miles below the ground

We’ve camouflaged the mouth with stones
From Bradford Northern spies:
From plastic ‘E-Type’ Englishmen
With promise in their eyes
And we’ve boarded up the entrance
For the way must not be shown;
And we’ll tell them all to **** off
And make their ******* own!

My Dad works down in arms and legs
Where production’s running high
It’s he that checks the wooden moulds
And stacks them forty high
But he’s had some rejects lately
‘cos there’s such a big demand;
So he sells them to the northern clubs
And stamps them ‘second-hand’

It’s there where Harry Dampers works
It’s where the money’s best
But now his health is failing
And the dust lies on his chest
But he’ll get his compensation
Though his health’s gone off the rails
When he sees that finished product
Score the winning try for Wales
But now the belts are empty
Came a sadness with the dawn
And the body-press is idle
And the valley’s blinds are drawn
Disaster struck this morning
When a fitter’s mate named Ron
Cracked the mould of solid gold
That once made Barry John
Old Harry Dampers (struck with grief)
Received the final call
And old Harry has been taken to
The greatest outside-half of all
Whose hands are kind and gentle
Though they bear the mark of nails
So Harry stamped him ‘Number Ten’
‘cos he was made in Wales

And the wheels will go on turning
And trams will run on rails
To that factory ‘neath the mountain
Making outside-halves for Wales