Cock on Ball

Spurs is 125

by Dave

There was something a little bit odd about the other night, but I can’t quite put my finger on exactly what it was.

It wasn’t the light show, although that was pretty unimpressive and certainly not worth turning up an hour early for as the website had promised. The flags were ok as well, in fact the flag waving at the beginning was possibly the highlight of the evening’s affairs. I heard more than one person after the game suggest that “we should do the flag thing more”. Quite.

It might have been the 50 “legends” that came out onto the pitch to remind us of our illustrious history. It started well with video messages from Waddle, Lineker and Ardiles, in fact this was enough to get the crowd extremely excited about the faces that were about to appear. Would Greaves be there? Perhaps Gazza? Maybe Klinsmann?

Well, no. Apart from a few notable exceptions like David Ginola, Dave MacKay, Steve Perryman, Nayim and a few others, it was a fairly embarrassing bunch being labelled as legends. Before the game there was a debate as to whether David Howells deserved legendary status, and perhaps in our modern era he does, but the likes of Steve Sedgley and Espen Baardsen certainly do not. The fact that Steffen Freund received one of the biggest cheers of the night is testament to just how far we have fallen from the Glory, Glory years we were supposed to be commemorating.

Perhaps I’m being harsh – the club had gone to quite a bit of effort for sure – but personally I was not filled with pride or nostalgia standing there seeing thousands of what looked like Man City flags being waved at a bunch of mediocre players from our distinctly unimpressive recent past, all in the name of celebrating a fairly arbitrary number of years since our club’s inception. It was more a sense of confusion and slight embarrassment.

This was not alleviated by seeing my team run out in a Blackburn kit. In fact, while some were suggesting that our first half performance was marring the occasion, to me it was the perfect reflection. A confused and schizophrenic display summed things up nicely.

Half time came, and following the boos that are almost a standard now, I felt genuine sympathy for the poor bloke who then had to come out and unveil ‘The Spurs Opus’. At Ł4,000 (yes, Ł4,000), this unbelievably exorbitant chronicle of our history is perhaps unlikely to fly off the shelves anyway, but in terms of finding the ideal advertising spot, the half time window wasn’t as suitable as the club’s marketing department might have thought. It in fact came across as a bad joke.

Luckily a miraculous second half comeback gave the game a good reason to be remembered and the occasion was saved, but for me the draw was more than a little bitter-sweet. 125 years of glory was supposed to be the message of the evening, but faced with the harsh reality of our dismal recent history, the proceedings merely highlighted the fact that our total number of glorious years is far from 125. It’s more like 10.

I’m being unfair, of course. The club made every effort to make the occasion special, the fans were in tremendous voice and the players showed genuine spirit and determination to salvage a point. It was a good night for the club. But listening to the gleefully ironic singing of ‘Happy Birthday’ from the Villa fans, it wasn’t hard to gain a sense of perspective on the evening. Hopefully by the time the 150th one comes around we’ll have a bit more to celebrate.

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