Why Spurs?

By Ray King
June 18 2003

I don’t know what it feels like to be the fan of the many professional football clubs in the land – I just know what it feels like to be a fan of one – Tottenham Hotspur FC.

And given the frustrations and the disappointments and the under achievements of the last - God knows how many years, you would think that the feelings of a Spurs fan would be anything but happy.

So why is it that I cannot help loving the club as much as I do? Why is it I along with so many Tottenham fans feel so passionately for and remain so loyal to a club which so many people like to portray as a failure? And let’s not forget that a huge percentage of the fan base is made up of thousands upon thousands of supporters who are too young to have seen the Glory Days at White Hart Lane?

Well for those mealy-mouthed critics and TV Pundits who smirk as they tell us that we Spurs fans live in the past, let me tell you that we do not. We live for today and for the future but we are who we are BECAUSE of our past. This is our heritage. This is what makes Tottenham Hotspur Football Club what it is. It is why - when the announcer at WHL screams out at 2.55pm on a Saturday “Welcome to White Hart Lane, the World famous home of Tottenham Hotspur”, that this is not an empty boast. We are a truly global club – and almost unbelievably this in an age where success - and success in the “here and now” is ALL and where so many Spurs fans have witnessed so little success with their own eyes.

It’s nearly 37 years since my first visit to White Hart Lane. But the 4-3 defeat suffered at the hands of West Ham did nothing to put me off. Spurs was in my blood and my Dad who first went to WHL in 1931 mesmerized me with the stories of buzz bombs over the ground during the War and of “Push and Run” and of style and grace. 37 years and I still become full of nervous anticipation when I enter the ground today – my 9 year old son beside me who I have tried to mesmerize with tales of Greavsie, Mackay, Hoddle, Ardiles and Gazza. And as we watch the game and the long periods of intense frustration are punctured with a flash of flowing graceful football, I turn to him and say “That’s football the Tottenham way, son!” – just as my Dad did to me 37 years ago.

And when the success returns, it will be in the “Tottenham way”. We Spurs fans know this and
it makes us what we are.

By Ray King

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Thanks Gary Beaumont