A view from the Shelf....

Guest Blogger - Al Beeden - September 2024

This is me. Born in Camberwell, brought up in Peckham.  Logically, I should have been a Millwall fan, but Hallelujah, I was saved!

When I was five, my uncle dropped in and asked my dad if he’d heard about the Tottenham result. Being more of a boxing fan, the old man hadn’t. When he (and I) heard that Spurs had just put ten past Everton, my footballing fate was sealed. That the match was also the first game with Sir Bill as manager was a divine extra.

So, once a Spurs man, always a Spurs man. I started going to the Lane in 1967 with my sister’s best friend. She supported West Ham, so that was the first game I went to. We won 5-1. After that, I made the cross-town trip to White Hart Lane with a couple of mates – usually Palace or Charlton fans who fancied watching a bit of proper football. Because of the cost, and the fact that I was still quite young, I didn’t get to as many matches as I wanted (nor probably as many as I remember), but every time was such an amazing buzz. I remember the noise, the chants and the cheering, and the way the adults looked after us kids, making room for us so we could stand at the wall next to the pitch.

My memories of games are jumbled: being two-down at half-time against Man U and getting a draw. Standing directly in line with the goalpost when Jimmy Greaves took a cheeky free-kick against Chelsea. The referee had blown for the kick to be taken, but Chelsea were still arguing about it when Greavesy curled the ball round the wall and into the net… Pat Jennings picking crosses out of the air... Jimmy Robertson weaving his way down the wing... A rumour flowing round Liverpool Street Station when we were on the way to a Liverpool match: the scousers were coming armed with razor blades and lead sewn into their scarves! I remember a lot of rushing around in a tide of blue and white. Whether we were running away or looking for a fight I couldn’t say. It was all safety in numbers stuff.

One day, as I waited to see the half-time scores go up next to the alphabet painted on the wall on the other side of the pitch, I got talking to a couple of old men who had spent the half trying to out-shout the twenty-odd thousand around them.  They had been going to the Lane for donkeys’ and told me about players I’d never heard of. They talked about the glory nights of European success (all before TV coverage of course) and our chances in the Cup. Those blokes knew all the names and scores from fifty years past. Then one of them asked me if I knew my history. I assumed he meant something to do with school, but he didn’t. They gave me a crash course in The History; how the club was formed under a lamppost, where the name came from and then the story of how Spurs were relegated from the First Division just after World War One. I listened intently: at the end I understood the reason for Spurs’ hatred of the only team never to have honestly earned a place in the top flight. A team that had deliberately moved from Woolwich into North London regardless of the fact that both Spurs and Leyton Orient were well established in the that area. I left that game changed: I knew my History.

In those days there were no replica strips available, though it was possible to buy club badges at Noble’s in Deptford. Spurs’ navy and white was easy to copy, so I soon had a full strip to show my allegiance. I hardly ever got beaten up. I began to collect programmes from a shop behind Peckham Rye Park, and I soon had bags full of Spurs stuff going back to the forties. I would pore over these, soaking up the names and dates.  I got into pointless arguments at school, where I tried to correct anyone who suggested that there might be other teams on the planet, and at times I suppose I came over as a right prat. I just couldn’t help it. I still support Spurs, and I can still be a prat. Proof of that (drawn at random from the mass of evidence available) was that I managed to lose all but a very small handful of my Spurs stuff during various moves around the country.

But now, here I am in New Zealand. Still waiting for glory, still believing, still Tottenham.

Come On You Spurs!