Tottenham Origins – how I became a Lilywhite

Most football fans I know were brought up to support one team or another because that’s who their Dad supports, or that’s the local team.  It’s natural, it’s normal.  That’s how football fans are born.

I didn’t have that influence.  My Dad had absolutely no interest in football.  He still doesn’t.  He seems to think it strange that twenty-two grown men would want to run around in the rain chasing a ball.  Even more foreign to him was that people would be interested in watching twenty-two men charge about getting wet.

There wasn’t even the local team everyone was mad about to get me interested.  We lived in south Worcestershire, so there was no local team (don’t give me Kidderminster Harriers) to get excited about. 

I carried on, no allegiance to any team, unaware of what it was to be tied both in your heart and brain to one team.  Football was just what filled in the gaps between lessons at school. 

Until that day.  The day it happened.  The day I realised what football really was.

The date : July 1^st 1990

England v Cameroon, World Cup Quarter Final

I’d been aware of Italia ’90.  Someone bought me a Panini sticker album (I still need a Neil Webb, and a Columbia shiny).  I was 10 years old.  I remember it like it was only a couple of decades ago. 

That match was the start of a love affair that changed my life.  Watching Gary Lineker fire those two penalties past Thomas Nkono stirred the first feelings of patriotism within me.  All of a sudden I cared that En-ger-land were at the World Cup finals.  The tension throughout that match was gut wrenching.  I felt sweaty and sick it got to me that much (plus I’d probably scoffed a couple of packets of Opal Fruits and a Marathon which may or may not have had an influence). 

I was hooked and made no effort to escape capture.  By the time the Semi Final arrived three days later I knew the England squad inside out.  I watched along with the whole country as we came from behind with Lineker cancelling out Brehme’s opener, with Gazza’s tears flooding the pitch. 

Ok, ok, so it’s obvious how I awoke as an England fan, right?  But how did this turn itself into what is now a twenty year obsession with Tottenham Hotspur?

Lineker and Gascoigne were both Spurs men.  Simples.  One of England’s greatest strikers and a chubby Geordie lad both pulled on that slightly itchy Hummel / Holsten outfit when not on England duty. 

Decision made.  Unorthodox I grant you, but that’s how it was.  Since that heartbreaking penalty shootout in Turin I’ve been a Tottenham boy.  And now I'm a proud father to two boys that hopefully will follow the ‘normal’ route to finding their club and do as their Dad says.  They are 21 months, and 3 weeks so I’ve got time to iron out any signs of straying from the noble path.

Looking back, it’s scary thinking about what could have been.  If Gary hadn’t been so adept at finding the back of the net from 12 yards, maybe David Platt or Steve Bull would have scored those penalties v Cameroon and become my hero.  That way, supporting Villa or Wolves I could have fitted in at school and beyond, being normal and supporting a local team.  I’m sure I’d have enjoyed the excitement of football outside the top flight, or mid-table mediocrity.  I should think myself lucky to be alive – that’s quite a bullet I dodged all those years ago.

How did you find yourself forever betrothed to Spurs?  Did anyone else colour themselves Lilywhite after Italia ‘90

The only way is Spurs.