Wear a beret to the Spurs

Guest Blogger - Peter Parussini - November 2024

Being an Italian, of a certain generation, dad used to wear a beret out whenever it was cold.

It was always a point of embarrassment for me (who wears a beret in New Zealand?) and was my primary focus when he suggested we go watch an English First Division team called Tottenham Hotspur play one cold school night in May 1976 at Newmarket Park against an Auckland XI.

For a moment, knowing the upcoming dress code, I almost said I was too busy with homework.

All I had known about “the Spurs”, as dad called them, was the information in my Subbuteo set – played at White Hart Lane and nicknamed the “Lillywhites”. They had a reputation for entertaining football and had an English centre forward called Martin Chivers and a Northern Ireland goalkeeper called Pat Jennings and they sometimes featured on “The Big Match” on Sundays.

That was the sum of all I knew about them.

Newmarket Park was an old rubbish tip in a gully, with concrete steps up a steep bank with a giant iron roof partially covering the middle section on one side and an old wooden stand maybe 20 metres high on the other. The pitch was brown with green blotches over it. Hardly the venue for the beautiful game.

Spurs were on an end of season world tour, which took them to Toronto in Canada, Lautoka in Fiji, Auckland and Wellington before finishing with five matches in Australia. A number of their key players were out on British Home Championship duty.

The only other match I’d been to with dad was at Carlaw Park as a five-year-old when George Best and Manchester United beat Auckland 8-1. All I remember of that was sitting on a steep grass bank with the sun in my eyes and having an ice cream. Thankfully, it was a hot afternoon, so dad didn’t feel the need to wear that beret.

In a country obsessed with rugby any gathering of Auckland’s football tribes – from the Dalmatians in the West, and the “Poms” in the South and the North Shore – was an almost religious event.

The one thing that united this global group of strangers and their first-generation children was being a New Zealander and in quietly, almost secretly, keeping the football faith. And going to Newmarket Park was a pilgrimage, something you just had to do as proof of your devotion.

From the walking down the middle of the road to the match, to the ritual chant-like songs of humour and mild invective at imaginary opponents; we had returned to any high street in the UK or village square in Europe.

The 10,000 at Newmarket Park that freezing night had done that and they were in good spirits most of the match because the Auckland XI led for most of it.

It was 3-2 with five minutes remaining when Spurs decided to finish the match off. It was like a cat playing with a mouse and finally getting tired of the game and with three swipes putting Auckland out of its misery. It ended 5-3 to Spurs but we locals went home happy.

I don’t remember the goals well but Scottish forward John Duncan scored twice, midfielder John Pratt and winger Jimmy Neighbour got one each and young defender Keith Osgood converted a penalty. Local football legends Keith Nelson, Dave Taylor and Iain Ormond scored for Auckland.

But I well remember two Spurs players.

The first was a balding and tiny right sided midfielder called Ralph Coates. I didn’t notice him during the first half but then in the second it was like a switch went on and he decided to play. He was everywhere, running with the ball at feet, tackling back and playing the ball forward. All the while his comb over seemed stuck to his head.

With about half an hour to go and with Auckland still ahead Spurs brought on an unknown lanky and long-haired attacking midfielder, who had only played once before for the first team, called Glenn Hoddle. I remember Hoddle tripping over the ball on the muddy pitch early on and a man sitting not far from us shouting, with a few expletives in between: “You’re going nowhere in football, lad.” But dad, nodding his head at Hoddle, said: “Watch the way that boy passes the ball.”

One of the crazes when we were kids was the yoyo, a string tied around a circular mandarin-sized spinner that would go back and forth from your hand. Every time Hoddle touched the ball, I kept thinking he had it attached like a yoyo.

He would chip it forward directly to the feet of team mates, flick it behind his left foot to head off in a different direction, all the while gliding a few centimeters across the Newmarket Park mud. The ball just seemed to find him.

Before I left New Zealand on my “OE” in 1983, dad gave me his beret “for those cold European evenings.”

It was a wet, freezing and dark afternoon a few days from New Years 1984 and I had nothing else to put on my hung over head. So, I wore that beret to my first match at White Hart Lane. I didn’t have a ticket and naively thought I could just rock up and buy one. I’d taken the Victoria Line to Tottenham Hale station and then followed the crowd on the 30-minute walk to White Hart Lane.

Before I knew it, I heard touts offering tickets and after sheepishly wandering around the stadium – High Road, to Paxton Road, to Worcester Ave and back around Park Lane - I took the bold and illegal step to buy one from a dodgy looking thickly-accented Londoner outside a shop on the corner of High Road and Whitehall Street.

“Lookin to git inta match, matey? I gotta spare ticket. Whadya reckon?” It was 40 pounds and most of my week’s spare wages but got me a seat high in the East Stand.

I’d never seen anything like it – standing room near the pitch and then two layers of seating above, with the giant roof held up by a series of kauri like poles reaching to the sky that interrupted the view.

When the chant went up “Come On You Spurs”, I would have cried if I hadn’t been shivering with so much excitement.

I’d found my drug of choice. I’d instantly become an addict.

Spurs were down 2-0 to Watford in the first half (nothing seems to have changed!). Everyone was groaning.

But, just like in Auckland all those years earlier, Spurs came storming back in the second spell through goals to fullback Chris Hughton and Hoddle. Keith Burkinshaw was screaming at the team from the sideline and I joined “The Lane” in its roar.

I’d never experienced the joy of being at one with so many others at exactly the same time – the ecstasy, sadness, anxiety and anger. This was my new family.

While a John Barnes penalty near the end stole it for Watford, I remember thinking the experience was a natural progression from being at Newmarket Park. Regardless of the ups and downs, this was going to be my team.

So, I continued to give touts much of my wages outside White Hart Lane while I lived in London. It became my fortnightly ritual and was the highlight of a dreary Margaret Thatcher dominated winter.

While my dear old dad has since passed away, I still have that beret and I still can’t kick my addiction.

Peter