JAMES Tarkowski and Matt Lowton swapped the search for points for poems last week as they visited a primary school to help launch a new poetry competition.

The Clarets defenders were at Padiham Primary School as part of the Premier League’s Writing Stars scheme, a nationwide poetry competition for primary school children.

The Clarets defenders, along with staff from Burnley FC in the Community, helped deliver a classroom session to Year 5 and Year 6 pupils, with the children writing their own poems before Tarkowski and Lowton read out a poem at the front of the class.

And pupil Xavier Brookes achieved something no Premier League striker has managed this season, getting the better of Tarkowski in a one-on-one battle as he defeated the centre back in a rhyme battle.

It was a defeat Tarkowski took well. He said: “It’s nice to come out here and see the kids and with it being the local area you get a lot of Burnley fans so it’s great for them to see a couple of players.

“It’s probably the first club I’ve been at where most of the kids are Burnley fans. I’ve been at clubs previously where you go to schools and there’s United, Chelsea, Liverpool fans, but here they all seem to be Burnley fans.”

Two of the pupils were called to the front to read their own poems before Tarkowski and Lowton teamed up to read in front of the rest of the class.

The poetry contest, supported by the National Literacy Trust, forms part of the Premier League Primary Stars programme, the Premier League’s flagship education scheme which offers free curriculum-linked teaching resources to primary schools and schoolchildren.

And Lowton was happy to take time out from training to offer his support to the event and to the children,

“It’s great to come to these events,” the right-back said.

“We saw one young lad when we walked in who just started crying, he was overwhelmed seeing us both, so it’s nice to come out and make the kids happy.

“It was good to get involved. The poems were really good, we went round and had a look and they’d done some really good stuff.

“When someone comes in from the outside and gives their time up it helps the children and they enjoy it.”