Once upon a time - A glimpse into Spurs History 1

By Dave P
August 13 2005

Once upon a time in England we used to play cricket in the summer and did not start playing football until September. This means that matches in the early years in August are few and far between. Matches between us and Portsmouth in August did not start until 1974 but we did play Portsmouth quite regularly in the 1900s in both the Southern and Western Leagues.

When was the first time we played Portsmouth in Portsmouth then? The answer to that was in January 1900 in the Southern District Combination, a competition we were runners up in (and the only year we played in that competition). The winners incidentally were Millwall and the match between ourselves and Woolwich Arsenal at Plumstead was abandoned after 55 minutes because of crowd trouble. Anyway, back to the Portsmouth game. A crowd of around 4000 witnessed a 2-2 draw with Spurs goals being scored by Thomas Smith and Tom Pratt.

Tom Smith was an outside right who joined us from Preston North End in 1898. In fours years at Tottenham he scored 41 goals in 181 games gaining a Southern League Champions medal and an FA Cup winners medal. In 1904 he returned to Preston and finished his career at Maryport Tradesmen after a spell at Carlisle (Who incidentally are playing my other lot Barnet today).

Tom Peet Pratt played for Spurs between September 1899 and April 1900 when he too joined Preston North End. Like Tom Smith he also joined us from Preston following earlier spells at Fleetwood and Grimsby. Whilst he was with Spurs he scored 54 goals in only 60 matches. After leaving Preston he played for Fleetwood before moving back south to play for Woolwich Arsenal and Fulham before finishing his career at Blackpool. His career as a centre forward comprised 82 goals in 220 league games in total, 54 of those in that one season at Tottenham.

Now for the August matches against Pompey. Four in fact and three of those were pre season friendlies but first we look at a League Division 1 game at Fratton Park on 28th August 1957 when a gate of 33,479 witnessed a very one sided game. Unfortunately we were on the wrong end of a 5-1 defeat with Bobby Smith scoring our only goal.

Strangely we then played them at home a week later and once again they scored five however we must have improved as we managed three. 35,813 saw Tommy Harmer (with a penalty), Johnny Brooks and an M.C Dulin get our three in that 5-3 defeat.

Heavy defeats considering we finished 3rd in Division one that season behind champions Wolves and Runners Up Preston and even more surprising given that Portsmouth finished 3rd bottom and just avoided relegation on goal average.

The only other times we have played Portsmouth in August were pre-season friendlies and those games were as follows

7th August 1974 - 2-0 away win with goals from Chris Jones and Jimmy Neighbour.

9th Aug 1983 - 3-1 away win and the goals were scored by Graham Roberts, Tony Galvin and Gary Mabbutt

and finally on 10th August 1992 we lost 4-2 at thier place and Vinny Samways got both our goals.

One more game worthy of a mention but not Portsmouth. On this weekend in 1961 we played in the Charity Shield. I believe this game was played at White hart lane in front of 36,593 but stand to be corrected (The Charity Shield in thoise days being played at the Champions ground. As we were the previous seasons 'Double' winners we were pitted against an FA chosen England Select XI. We won 3-2 with two goals from Les Allen and one fron Bobby Smith.