From A Boy To A Spurs Man

Now Dad was a keen Arsenal fan, whose support of his club dated back to the early 1930s.  As a boy he lived a 20 minute walk from his parents’ house to Highbury, so Arsenal was his local club.  Prior to this Saturday in 1960, the last Arsenal match he saw was on 1st February 1958 when Arsenal hosted and lost 5-4 to Manchester United, the famous Busby Babes.  This was United’s last match before the Munich tragedy.

Two years later Dad decided to take his son to his first match.

Now, if I was an Arsenal fan, I would make sure the first match I took my seven-year-old son to watch would be an Arsenal game. Why would you not? Why risk my son falling in love with another team, as was always the possibility with an impressionable 7 -year-old. However, for some reason Dad took me to White Hart Lane on that Saturday to see Tottenham Hotspur play Blackburn Rovers in the FA Cup 5th round. At exactly the same time, Arsenal were playing Everton at Arsenal’s home ground, Highbury, in a Division 1 league match. So why on earth did Dad take me to see Tottenham and not Arsenal? I never did find out. If Dad wanted me to become an Arsenal fan, taking me to see Tottenham in my first match was incredibly risky, as the impact of his first football match on a young, impressionable football loving boy would be powerful.

Would I have been better off as an Arsenal fan ?  Six times champions in my lifetime, or even Leyton Orient ?  It was only three miles from our house, etc., but Spurs allowed me to adore, worship and revel in watching Greaves, Mackay, Hoddle et al.  Which would be best ?  Discuss.

And, so, it turned out, I saw Tottenham in my first match and, even though they lost 3-1, I instantly became a Tottenham Hotspur supporter, which proved to be a life-long sentence for me to bear.  What my dad thought of this I never discovered but he made no effort to steer me to being an Arsenal fan.  Sixty plus years later I am convinced that, had Dad taken me to see Arsenal on that fateful Saturday, I would have become as passionate an Arsenal fan as I became a Tottenham one.  Life’s decisions often seem to turn on the unexpected and inexplicable.

So, Dad and I set off early to catch the bus to Tottenham’s ground.  The ground was on Tottenham High Road, which was a very busy road.  As we came close to the ground, Dad pointed out the tall floodlight pylons, the like of which I had never seen before.  For ever after the floodlight pylons were my first sign that I was near to the ground.  We had arrived very early at the ground, as I expect Dad was worried about there being a large crowd.  We paid our entrance money at the gate – 90% of spectators paid at the gate in those days – 3/6d (3 shillings and 6 pence in old money: 17 ½ pence in today’s money) for Dad and 1/6d (7 ½ pence) for me and walked to the terraces where we were to stand.

Immediately, I was hit by the sight of a dirty brown patch of land and was amazed to learn that was the pitch.  I expected green grass, but Dad explained that the drainage was poor and all the grass usually died before Christmas.  But I was not put off because the sheer size of everything was just mind boggling to this seven-year-old lad.  Some things stick in my mind even from so many years away : the towering stands surrounding the pitch, which seemed to go up for ever; the wall around the pitch had strange curved railings on its top; the track between the pitch and spectators was a deep red colour; along the far wall were boards with letters on from A-Z, which Dad explained was where the half-time scores in other matches would be put and the two goals, which seemed so big and actually had nets on … sheer wonder and joy.

Dad took us up to the second tier where the view was wonderful and the whole pitch could be seen perfectly.  It was nicknamed The Shelf, as it looked just like one.  We stood in front of a metal structure called a stanchion, which Dad said would protect me from the people behind it.  It was just the perfect place to watch from (and became my favourite viewing spot when I grew older). However, I decided that I wanted to be right down the front on the lower level and right by a goal.  A terrible idea, believe me.  What Dad should have done was explain to me that such a place was the worst place to watch from, as very little of the game could be seen from there.  He should have told me stories of why his place was the best in the ground and fired up my imagination.  If all that failed, he could have said, “Why don’t we watch from here today and maybe stand down at the front next time we come?” I would have accepted that and had a great view of the match.

But no, for reasons known to him alone, Dad said OK and we went down to the front just to the side of the goal and got a lousy view.  Mind you, I did not mind or complain, especially when one of the Tottenham players came right down to the wall where we stood to collect the ball.  Maybe I could have touched him, but I dared not do so.  I was just in football heaven with my Dad : what could be better ?

Tottenham lost the match 3-1 but I did not seem to mind. When we got home, Mum had to listen to me go on about every aspect of my magical day and I even used the salt and pepper pots to show how the players moved.  I was hooked.  Football, in general, and Tottenham, in particular, had a new and very keen follower much to Dad’s delight.  Mum’s opinion was not recorded but I expect she realised she could not do anything about it and was happy for me.  Also, she would be pleased there was another dad-son link.  Later, Dad called Tottenham “Spurs,” explaining Spurs was the team’s nickname, which was usually used.

That night I was the happiest boy in Hornsey and went to sleep dreaming of my new heroes, the footballers in the white shirts of Spurs.  Little did I know what I was getting myself into.  As football, in general, and Spurs, particularly, were to strongly influence, maybe dominate, much of my life from that day on.

On Monday 22nd I went to school and told everyone about my trip to see Spurs.  Suddenly I was a star of the playground with even older boys coming to talk to me.  Ours was a poor-ish area and few went on treats like this.  I wish I had taken the programme to show all and sundry but had decided not to in case it got damaged.  I told my teacher and was invited to stand up and tell the class, which I did with relish.

Susie told me that she bought a copy of the programme but used it to keep her hair dry in the day’s heavy rain.  The programme became mushy and Susie threw it away.  Today the programme sells for over £5500 per copy !  Later I was told that Susie’s Father, my great Grandfather, had attended Spurs drawing 2-2 with Sheffield United in the FA Cup Final in 1901 at Crystal Palace.  Spurs won the replay 3-1 at Bolton.  However, Grandma was always rather uncertain about that – mind you she would only have been three at the time.

Dad and I went to a few more Tottenham home matches until the season ended in April,  but I did not see Tottenham win any match in that time. I later learnt that Tottenham had been top of Division 1 on the day of my first match, but lost and drew too many matches up to April and fell away to finish third just two points from being Champions.  None of this worried me in any way, though.

I feel a little perspective is required here. Nowadays football matches are shown live on TV almost every day of the season. Many pages of most newspapers are dedicated to football. Club websites are available to all and football seems to dominate much of the media. In 1960 it was so different. Only two matches were always shown live on TV each season: the FA Cup Final and one England international match. Although popular, football received very little coverage in newspapers, mainly as these papers had far fewer pages than today. No football club had a shop and no team kit, souvenirs, mementos or any other merchandise was available to buy. And, of course, websites were still 35+ years away. The difference could not be starker.

Going to Wembley was really exciting, as any outing is. However, this was to be even better, as the match kicked off at 3pm on a school day meaning I was to miss a half day of school to see a football match. Brilliant. On the day, 11th May 1960, I took a note to my teacher informing her that I had a dental appointment that afternoon, so my father would collect me at lunchtime. I had been carefully briefed as to what to say if any questions were asked. To my eight years and four days old mentality, I was surprised that no-one guessed our ruse and, so, off I went.

I remember little about the match beyond a 3-3 draw between England and Yugoslavia and no Tottenham player playing but was astounded at the size of Wembley. However, this day remains one of the most treasured memories of my life. Taking time off school to go out with my dad, just him and me, and going to Wembley to see England play. Life just could not get better than that. The dental trick

was used a couple of more times and I am not sure what my mother felt about it but, sadly, it stopped when I went to grammar school. However, taking me out of school to watch football shows Dad had his priorities just right, I feel, which I confirmed when, as a headteacher, I gave a pupil permission to miss school to see a football match in the 1990s. Mine was a really magical father and son afternoon. My only regret is that we did not think of taking a photograph of me at Wembley.It would be fair to say that, after attending my first few football matches, I became a football obsessive. Dad started buying me Charles Buchan’s Football Monthly, the most famous and respected football magazine at the time. I devoured everything in each copy, cutting out any pictures of a Spurs player and sticking it on my bedroom wall. Dad brought me home any pictures of my heroes that he found in newspapers and they went on the wall too. I talked about football non-stop and spent every waking hour in the garden practising whilst ruining the grass. Dad seemed pleased, Mum probably less so. Looking back, I sincerely feel dad dreamed of his son  becoming a famous footballer, which, later in his childhood, is exactly what I imagined, hoped for and wanted more than anything.

I cannot remember any rules being printed but I may be wrong there and I expect other facts about each sport were included that escape me know.

This book became my personal Bible. I read it, re-read it, studied it again and learnt as many facts as I could. I learnt that Portsmouth FC played at Fratton Park, wore blue shirts white shorts and red socks, were founded in 1895, were known as Pompey and the picture of their badge showed a blue shield with a Saracen’s sword. I did not know what much of this meant but I learnt it just as easily as 7-year-olds learn the name of every dinosaur. I seemed to just absorb the information, helped by the good memory for trivia I have always had. The fact-based format made remembering all the details so much easier than prose would have. I have always been – and still am – fascinated by the minutiae of a subject I love and have never had difficulty learning such detail. Looking back, for a just turned eight-year-old, I think I did extremely well learning so much detail. This wonderful book had one other major benefit for me. It opened my eyes to all the sports in our country. This meant that I did not become just a football obsessive with little knowledge of or interest in other sports. No, I became a sports fanatic. I loved every sport, always football first but every other sport as well. I was fascinated and in love with all sports, well except swimming, but more of that to come.

How obsessive was I ? Well, I can remember sitting mum and dad in our front room and me dressing up in the colours of as many football teams as I could. I would walk into the room, as proud as punch, and ask which club I was. Dad seemed to like it, Mum must have been horrified and, wisely, Jenny (my sister – three years older than me) was nowhere to be seen.

This awareness of other sports allowed me to play endless games of imaginary sports in my back garden. But more of that later.

An example shows clearly what I was like.

French cricket was a popular game for all the family to play. The batsman kept the bat in front of his/her legs. To be out, the ball had to hit the legs or be caught off the bat. When I was fielding, I would claim the ball had hit the legs even when I knew it hadn’t and I would say I had caught the ball even when it had hit the ground first. When batting I was never out. If given out it was someone cheating or putting me off, maybe it never hit my legs. I might refuse to be out and when forced to I would throw the bat away and storm off in a temper, sometimes in tears. Not a good attitude to playing.

And this all really set how my life was to develop over many years. My world was viewed through the prism of sport, with the sharpest focus on football. Just about everything played second fiddle to sport, in general, and football, in particular. Without any immodesty, being good at most sports made my life very enjoyable and fun; Being able to read and remember most of what was read, allowed my knowledge of sport to increase immensely. At times, being very happy with my own company and not really needing or wanting many playmates, allowed me to live out endless sporting dreams in our back garden through the long school holidays. In fact, I was in sporting heaven.

As already stated, I first saw my, now beloved, Spurs win a game on 20th August 1960.  What happened over the next 8½ months re-wrote English football history and established this Tottenham Hotspur team as one of the all-time great footballing teams.

Now you may not be all that interested in football, so here I offer the abridged version. For football lovers I recommend you find any of the many books written about the Tottenham Double Team and re-live those magical moments in full. If you hate football, please just read this chapter to capture the magic felt by an eight-year-old boy delighting in his team’s success. Also highlights of a few of their league and cup matches are available on YouTube.

To summarise: Tottenham Hotspur won the Division 1 championship and the FA Cup, known as the League and Cup Double, becoming the first team to do so in the 20th century and only the third team to do so ever up to then.  In doing so they set so many records: most wins; most away wins; most goals scored; most points gained; the first team to win its first 11 matches; the first team to go unbeaten for its first 16 matches; the most of everything up to Christmas – every record broken; the only team ever to have five players each score ten goals by Christmas and so on.

In addition, this Spurs team did all these magnificent achievements playing, what everyone said was, the finest attacking football ever seen. They really were a team of marvels.

Dad took me to see twelve league matches that season and I can remember going to see the games against Everton 2-0; Manchester United 4-1; Aston Villa 6-2; Fulham 5-1; Birmingham 6-0; Burnley 4-4; Arsenal 4-2; Leicester 2-3; Chelsea 4-2; Preston 5-0; Sheffield Wednesday 2-1; West Bromwich Albion 1-2.

The Sheffield Wednesday match was the greatest of them all, as, if Spurs won, they would become Champions of England. Also, it was my second evening match and everything is much more exciting in the dark – sadly not a school day next day but you cannot have everything. The ground was packed, the atmosphere electric and the noise deafening. And when the match ended and Spurs were champions then we all waited and watched the players come out in the directors’ box to wave at the crowd. Truly memorable.

It also saw a strange event that turned potential disaster into a relieved bit of fun.

The Sunderland match was a replay after the first match ended 1-1 four days before. Spurs were just two matches from reaching the Final, where they would play at Wembley for the very first time.

Excitement and anticipation were at fever pitch.

Being a Wednesday, Dad collected me from school and we went straight to the ground, which I thought was strange. However, Dad had wisely guessed that there would be a massive crowd and that we had to arrive early to get our usual place in the ground. In 1961 all matches were pay at the gate and never all ticket. We arrived only to be astonished that by 4.30pm, three hours before the kick-off there seemed to be tens of thousands of people massing around the ground trying to find a queue to get in. One newspaper estimated up to 100.000 people tried to get in to see the match. Take some off for exaggeration, and the police’s estimate of 80,000 was more accurate. Whatever the figure, it presented Dad with real problem: which turnstile to go to and how not to lose his son in the crush of people. This was no orderly queue: no organisation, no stewards, just thousands of football fans eager to get into the ground. Telling me every two minutes to hold on tight and not let go, Dad eased our way towards a turnstile that seemed to me to have hundreds, maybe thousands, in the way. The turnstile we used was in a road behind the ground with a school on the other side of a normal back street. The crowd were being funnelled into a narrow area with much scope for accidents.

And, somehow, I let go of Dad’s hand.

It happened by accident, as even an adventurous Michael knew that day it was crucial I did not get lost. At just that time the crowd surged, as the turnstiles opened and the cheering crowd took on an energy of its own with masses of bodies swaying this way and that. Shouts and cheers were let out with everyone moving without any control, going where the mass of the crowd took them.

Dad and I became separated, and I could not see him, not surprising as I was only an eight-year-old boy amongst adults. Maybe it was because I was shorter than everyone else, I found myself pushed towards the turnstile being completely alone in a sea of thousands of strangers.

Apparently, Dad had been screaming out loud that he had lost his son, a noise that even today, would focus the minds of all around him. After all every man there could easily put himself in Dad’s place, a place of genuine terror and anguish.

I did not cry but stood there numbed and motionless with fright. At the turnstile the men packed closely nearby me clearly knew I was lost. One asked me where my dad was and I told him I let go of his hand and lost him. Suddenly two men lifted me high in the air and another climbed on someone else so he could shout out across the heads of everyone, “Who’s boy is this?”  The shout was taken up by others until Dad shouted out, “He’s mine.” Squeezed as they were, the crowd made a pathway for Dad to come and collect me, which resulted in hugs all round, thanks freely given and one man saying, “He didn’t cry, your lad.” I was so relieved to have Dad with me that I could hardly speak. Even at a distance of over 60 years and me being a father myself, what emotions Dad had gone through in those dramatic moments I can barely imagine. Perhaps he experienced the only time in his life that was worse than jumping into Normandy with the Parachute Regiment on D-day.

Looking back, tragedy was averted by the quick action of the two men who lifted me up. Any delay and who knows where Dad may have been. This confirmed that in those days a strong sense of community existed.

But all was now well and we went into the ground, as my being lost had put us at the front of the crush – not a queue that evening but just a mass of humanity pushing toward a small destination.

Spurs won 5-0 and went on to win the FA Cup. Dad and I sang songs on the way home and were met by mum with tales of how we had scored five – yes, five – goals again and how everything looked scary and exciting in the dark. I went to bed dreaming of me playing in those white shirts that shone so brightly in the dark night under the floodlights.

The official crowd was 64,918 and the atmosphere was electric, rarely being bettered in my further 60+ years of watching Spurs.

Neither Dad nor I ever told Mum the story of what had happened outside the ground. At times even an eight-year-old boy can instinctively know what not to say without being told not to.

My second night match was the following month when Dad and I saw Spurs clinch the 1st Division Championship by beating Sheffield Wednesday. It was a very tense match, especially when Wednesday scored first. When Spurs scored their two goals the noise just erupted all around the ground.

The longer the match went on the more the atmosphere became a celebration, as it became clear we would win and become Champions. Now 70, I expect I will never see Spurs as Champions again, so this memory will always shine brightly for me. Why so negative about seeing Spurs as champions again? Well, we have been in the football league since 1908 and been champions twice – draw your own conclusions. Jokingly, I used to say to the person who sat next to me at Spurs for 15 years that I knew when Spurs would be champions again – the season after I died, just to spite me. Quick as a lash he replied, “Could you hurry and go?”

Dad and I were there and had a good view of this moment.  This picture shows the Spurs captain being presented with the 1st Division trophy for the only time in my lifetime. Dad and I saw this picture happen together. Never to be forgotten.

Spurs won their FA Cup semi-final in Birmingham – Dad had said it was too far to go to watch it – which put them into the Final at Wembley.

This disappointed him greatly, but I felt OK as it was on television. Apparently, Tottenham received over 85,000 applications for the 23,000 tickets the club received and legend has it than one supporter paid £5,500 for one ticket on the black market, when the average annual wage was £2,500 p.a.! The Cup Final ticket was the hottest ticket in London that April and many were disappointed. The formal way of obtaining a ticket was through the cub itself. Every Spurs season ticket holder could buy a ticket. The 5000 remaining tickets were allocated by ballot with ballot cards being given out at the Spurs v Preston match, but this was kept a secret until the day of that match. Keen to go to the “Wembley ballot match” but not sure which match it would be, Dad and I attended the Chelsea match on Good Friday, Dad’s day off, and the Preston match on Easter Saturday, when he rushed through his work and raced home. Two games in two days, as was usual at Easter in those days. Sadly, we did not win the ballot for Cup Final tickets, a disappointment that was to be repeated in 1962 and one I again suffered in 1967. Mind you if we had won the ballot for one of us and have only one ticket between us a problem would arise as to who would go. Dad or his eight-year-old son on his own. Hmmmm!

But the whole family sat in our front room to watch the Final and see Spurs win the FA Cup for the third time in their 79 years history. I wore my rosette and we all cheered and shouted getting a little anxious before we finally scored after 69 minutes. In my first full season of supporting Tottenham Hotspur I had seen them win the legendary League and Cup Double.

Was it always this exciting being a Spurs fan? Well, 60+ years later I still wait for Spurs to become League Champions again and doubt I ever will see them do so. But let us not spoil a great weekend.

Weekend? Yes, because Dad took me to Tottenham High Road at 3 p.m. the following day to see the Spurs players parade in an open top bus holding the League Championship trophy and the FA Cup. That day was my ninth birthday, so another unforgettable memory. Sometimes life just could not get any better and that moment and that weekend is still up there with my wedding and our three children being born as the true highlights of my life. I am not sure if I had ever been closer to Dad either before or after that wonderful, unforgettable weekend. Thanks Dad !

In August 1961 my Father warned me not to expect Tottenham to have such a successful season in 1961-62 as they had the previous season.  I was surprised at this, as I thought we would just go on beating every team as before.  However, I soon learnt that my Father had been right, as Spurs started the season well but not brilliantly.

However, the great football excitement was that Tottenham were to play in the European Cup, which Dad had explained was just for the champions of each European country.  Dad bought me a book about the European Cup and I soon had memorised all the teams in Europe that Spurs might have to play, their colours, where they came from and anything else.  I discovered my beloved Spurs had been drawn against Gornik Zabrze, the champions of Poland, in the European Cup.

The European Cup … in 1961 even the competition’s name sounded exotically mysterious and magical to such a young lad, whose experience of the world extended only to the edges of the north London.  I had been around the boroughs of Hornsey, Tottenham, Harringay, Crouch End plus both Finsbury Park and Clissold Parks.  I had even been up to the centre of London to the zoo, museums, Buckingham Palace and Trafalgar Square but not much further.  Beyond a two-mile radius around Beresford Road, Hornsey N8, the world was largely unexplored by me.

So, it fell to Gornik Zabrze, Poland’s finest, to set alight my love affair with European football.  The mere name was wonderful.  How was Zabrze pronounced ?  I had never encountered such a strange name.  In 1961 all overseas names were anglicised.  Beijing was Peking; Munchen, Munich; Milano, Milan.  But Zabrze ?  How did one say a word with brz in it ?  Breeze?  Burzz ?  Reezy ?  I had no idea and no help from TV or radio, which had an extremely limited sports content.  Realising that I had to call the team something I settled on pronouncing it Gornik Zagreb, which was a city I had heard mentioned at school.  This neatly allowed me to displace the champions of Poland to Yugoslavia and as no-one corrected me on the school playground, Gornik Zagreb it stayed in speech and Gornik Zabrze it remained on paper.  Just writing the word Zabrze made me feel incredibly grown up, feeling I had been admitted into a secret world of places and words that were spelt with spelling patterns never seen before.  Truly, European football was taking me to places never imagined either figuratively or in reality.

The next task was to find where Gornik Zabrze played. Having found Poland, I set about scrutinising a school atlas for the place called Gornik, after all every football team always started with the place they came from.  Sheffield Wednesday came from Sheffield, Manchester City from Manchester, Nottingham Forest from Nottingham and, of course, Tottenham Hotspur from Tottenham.  It never occurred to me to look for Zabrze, as I would never look on a map for United, Town or Rangers would I ?  In addition, I never linked my oral version of Zabrze – “Zagreb,” which I could find on a map but not one of Poland, with the written version – “Zabrze.”  Well, I was only nine.  The most intense and concentrated search revealed no Gornik.  What did this mean ?  Perhaps Gornik was too small to be on the map, a bit like tiny villages I heard existed in England but had never seen on a map ?  If so, surely Gornik would be easy to beat.

But my febrile imagination conjured up the notion of Gornik being a secret place that was never on a map of Poland, probably so no spy could find it.  That must be it.  So, Gornik was a special and secret place which added to the danger of my Spurs going there and increasing the risk of them never returning, being lost in some Polish waste land.  Truly this European football was to be an exciting, unusual and, just maybe, terrifying adventure or so it seemed to a nine-year-old with possibly more imagination than common sense.

As previously stated, beyond my own private world, in which I conjured up the weird and wonderful world of European football that Spurs were about to enter, Europe remained not much less of a mystery in real life, being viewed with uncertainty and mistrust in 1961.

As a nine-year-old boy, I could not understand that this view made us insular, suspicious of anything foreign, not receptive to different ideas and intolerant of outsiders we could not quickly understand.  In fact this produced the very conditions that would make the massive influx of immigrants about to arrive in England such a tense and difficult time for the indigenous English people, as well as those that arrived from the West Indies, India, Pakistan and then from all points of the compass in the following years.

It was into this culture that the football European Cup was started in 1955.  At the time it was not an official UEFA competition (UEFA was trying to set up an international  European competition) but one started by the French sports newspaper L‘Equipe.  Not limited to national football club champions at first but inviting teams of “commercial worth,” all the major European footballing countries had a leading team invited. For England this meant Chelsea, League champions in 1954-55.  However, this new venture met with a typically English blinkered attitude from the English Football League, who controlled all four divisions of English football.  The Football Association’s (FA’s) Premier League being still 31 years distant.  The Football League’s secretary, Alan Hardaker, may have summed up the general view of European competition when he announced that Europe was best avoided as it was ”full of foreigners.”

Chelsea, meekly, bowed to this view, refusing to enter the new competition.  It took a strong and visionary character in Matt Busby to see beyond this parochialism and take Manchester United into the European Cup the following season.  In fairness to Chelsea, their declining entry into the inaugural European Cup was merely following past actions.  England refused to enter the first three World Cups, as clearly England were superior at football to all other countries, which would make their entering competition unnecessary, even unfair (Yes, believe it or not, this actually was the FA’s view!!!!).  Our isolationism did not stop at Chelsea, as England declined to enter the first European Nations Cup in 1960.

However, England’s view of European competition changed as the Manchester United “Busby Babes” gained success, fame and, ultimately, tragedy.  Busby’s team’s European Cup adventures in seasons 1956-7 and 1957-8 saw a 10-0 victory over Anderlecht, stirring battles with Real Madrid, the perceived masters of European football and, finally, the death of Busby’s great team in the Munich snow.  There in February 1958, their aeroplane crashed on take-off with the destruction of a wonderful team.  My dad always said the Busby Babes were the best English club side he ever saw, even better than the great Arsenal sides he saw in the 1930s, When asked if the Babes were better than Spurs’ double side he was unsure, only saying, “.. it would be close.”  The horror of Munich stunned the nation whilst, perversely, further ingraining the mystique of the European Cup into the country’s psyche.

If the Busby Babes greatly advanced the European Cup in English football’s eyes, it was a truly magnificent night in Glasgow in May 1960 that helped cement it.  Played in front of 134,000 at Glasgow’s Hampden Park, Real Madrid won their 5th consecutive European Cup by beating Germany’s Eintracht Frankfurt 7-3, in what is often considered one of the, maybe THE greatest football match ever.  Live on BBC TV the whole of England’s football supporters, along with my dad and me, saw football at its finest in a competition that was now to be a major target of England’s football elite.  It was into that competition that Spurs stepped in September 1961.

Spurs had experience of European football through many friendlies played at home and abroad, but friendlies remain merely friendlies and lack the essential bite and tension that competition brings.

Even so, these invitation matches proved a valuable introduction to the real thing, being football’s John the Baptist to the European Cup’s Jesus.

In 1961 qualification for the European Cup could be achieved only by winning your country’s national league.  That Spurs had done with élan in the 1960-61 season.  As such, in September 1961 the European Cup beckoned to Tottenham Hotspur.  Spurs took their first step in European competition when the lined up in the Gornik Stadium in Katowice with, tradition had it in the Daily Mail, only one Spurs fan in the 60,000 crowd (90,000 according to the Daily Express so no-one really knows).

European glory awaited them.

And it all went so horribly wrong.

Bill Nicholson, Spurs’ manager admitted, “We knew nothing of them. We watched them in one match but that showed us nothing that was useful. We knew they had a good player in Kohl but that was that.”  Showing possible complacency, Nicholson continued, “We prepared as for a normal league game. We knew we were a good team and thought that would be enough.”

After 47 minutes Spurs found themselves 4-0 down.

European glory seemed a distant dream in what Nicholson rated as a “very intimidating atmosphere.”  Late goals from Cliff Jones and Terry Dyson made the score a more respectful 4-2 and gave Spurs hope in their need to overturn the deficit at White Hart Lane the following week.

The effect of this result in North London was astonishing. Losing 4-2 to an unheard-of team from Poland, the same Poland we went to war for in 1939 ?  Impossible.

The sporting news media was severely limited in comparison to today’s almost 24 hours diet of such news, so, perhaps inevitably, rumour filled in the gaps.  How could the greatest team in England, perhaps ever in England, be humiliated 4-2 ?  It was just not possible, just inconceivable.  Clearly something strange, untoward, underhand, maybe even wicked, must have taken place.  The news reports suggested an intimidating atmosphere in the stadium, so that must have been it. 

On the playground of North Harringay Junior School and, presumably, elsewhere all over North London, this intimidating atmosphere was cranked up by gossip to become foul play, dubious practice, even cheating, after all only by some form of cheating could the mighty Spurs have been so humbled in the wilds of Poland.  Memories of the Busby Babes being killed in deepest Germany on their way back from Yugoslavia soon came to mind and it became easy to see conspiracies created by devious foreigners, especially when I was looking for them.  Clearly Spurs could never be defeated by a Polish team under normal circumstances, so there had to be something unnatural about what had happened over a thousand miles away in Eastern Europe.

As the stories about the first leg in Poland of the Gornik v. Spurs European Cup tie grew in their unreasonableness, the scene was set for the return leg when everyone was determined to see Spurs set the record right.  Welcome to our guests from Poland ?  No chance.  Any sort of welcome was hardly the feeling in North London that September night in 1961.

There were more to come but 20th September 1961, Tottenham v. Gornik stands out for so many reasons.  Firstly, the passion of the crowd.  I had experienced Spurs’ key matches of their 1960-61 double season : Sunderland at home in the Cup quarter final replay and Sheffield Wednesday at home when we clinched the league title – both matches having a mixed atmosphere of tension, expectation and fanaticism, which sent ripples of excitement and fear through my eight-year-old body.  But Gornik was something else completely, something almost primeval, intimidation in all its naked form, a baying crowd like those watching a medieval execution, where, by sheer force of will, 56,000 Spurs fans set out to destroy the confidence, poise and equilibrium of the Gornik team.  The crowd attempted to strip bare the resolution that the visitors would need to survive, and maintain their 4-2 advantage from the first leg and progress at Spurs’ expense.  Or so it seemed to a nine-year-old boy.

My memories are clear today: the dazzling floodlights showing the way to the ground from all four points of the compass.  Just like the Star of Bethlehem led the wise men to Jesus’ stable, the floodlights seemed to be calling us all to our own religious experience at our temple of football.  In the ground I seemed to barely be able to breathe as the packed terrace appeared intent on squeezing me more and more despite my father’s protective embrace.  Then the almost comical “Tottenham Angels,” fans dressed as angels wearing Spurs rosettes and parading around the blood red running track.  Following that, the explosion of noise as the teams came from the sanctuary of their dressing rooms onto the bear pit that was the pitch on that unforgettable night.

Wearing my blue and white scarf and bobble hat, I screamed, I shouted, I shrieked, I squealed, doing anything to match the deafening noise the crowd was making.  In the following home match’s programme the club commented that the national press accused the Spurs support of being close to hatred and fanaticism, whereas the club suggested it was just enthusiasm with the, “old time Tottenham roar at full blast”.  The programme notes continued suggesting that supporters were there to give total support when such support was needed in such an important game.  In years to come I was always surprised that the attendance was only 56,000, 8,000 down on the capacity, for the noise created on that night was as powerful as any I have heard since.  The epithet “White Hot Lane” was given to the pulsating atmosphere created on that September night.

Not ever needing to defend Tottenham’s fans, I know the passion that tumbled down from the masses that autumn evening was designed to intimidate, to frighten, to impose its will on the opponents, to strip bare the self-confidence of the Poles, to drag every last advantage out of playing at home.  This was no sporting crowd hoping for great entertainment in which the better team could win.  No, this was raw emotion aimed at reducing the visitors to nervous wrecks, to claw every piece of favour from the referee, whose decisions the crowd set out to influence from the start.  This was white, working-class Englishmen at war with foreigners and determined to show the indomitable war like spirit seen less than 16 years before in World War II.  It verged on evil and it scared the living daylights out of me, but my terror was bolstered by an awe that I had never felt before, a sense that there was a complete oneness between club, players, supporters and city that would simply refuse to be beaten.

Churchill would have approved.

The effect upon Gornik was immense from the moment Bobby Smith blatantly barged (maybe smashed would be more accurate) the Gornik goalkeeper into the back of his net with no apparent motive except to scare the keeper witless – to see if the goalie “fancied it!”  Then, through to the rock hard, maybe vicious, tackles that some of the Spurs players put in during the opening 25 minutes which saw Dave Mackay at his rampaging best.  But this remorselessly determined play in which some tackles stayed only slightly on the legal side of violent and many left legality far behind – not uncommon in late 50’s early 60’s football.  This was complemented by some of the most sublime football ever seen.  The Poles were shredded by both beauty and the beast in white shirts; the velvet glove of pure and perfect play concealing the iron fist of physical intimidation.  The Spurs players fed off the vocal intimidation pouring from the terraces and those supporters responded to the magic and malice that was seen on the pitch.

Gornik were destroyed, were flayed alive, were torn to shreds by the sheer brilliance of a truly great team at its peak, showing its sublime skills alongside a strength of aggression and quasi-violent play rarely seen from these same players.  The match ended 8-1 and Gornik could count themselves lucky that they got off so lightly.  Unquestionably a night to remember, a night in which my passion for Spurs was fired to steel like hardness in the kiln that was White Hart Lane for those precious 90 minutes.

On the way home my Dad was strangely quiet, perhaps trying to make sense of what he had seen that night.  Naturally he had a more nuanced view on the match and saw the quasi-violence for what it was, which horrified him.  I think this match stole some of his love for football, which only the 1966 World Cup was able to revive.  For me, I knew I had experienced something I had never previous known but was not sure what.  I just revelled in seeing Spurs win 8-1.

However, sheer bliss, after Christmas Mum and Dad told me I could go to see Spurs on my own, as long as I went with at least one friend.  As a nine-year-old, I was only allowed to attend Saturday matches at 3 p.m.  There was no problem finding a friend to go with, so, whenever we had the money to go, we would do so.  However, if no friend turned up, I promised not to go alone, but to come home.

We would meet up at the Turnpike Lane umbrella, a news stand outside the underground station.  Then we would catch the 123 bus, which took us along Westbury Avenue, down Lordship Lane and along Tottenham High Road.  The ticket cost 3d – a threepenny piece – for boys (1p in today’s money).  We set off nice and early, so there was no problem getting on the bus.  The admission to the match was 3s 6d (17p in) for adults and 1s 6d (7p) for boys.  The match programme cost 2d (just under 1p).  We would stand wherever we wanted to, as we got in early and you could walk around three sides of the pitch to go where we wanted.  After the match the bus home was very crowded but we 9/10 years olds were experts at squeezing onto a bus, even crawling between men’s legs to do so.  The journey only took about ten minutes, maybe even less.

We felt very grown up going on our own.

Now readers today might think letting a nine-year-old boy go to a football match with their friends but no adult was the height of parental irresponsibility.  Every imaginable danger might be going through your minds from violence to abduction, but 1961 in Hornsey, Harringay and Tottenham was not like that.

We were confident and knew we were safe because we spent a lot of our holidays walking around the Harringay area.  We were confident on the pavements and crossing roads, a confidence that only comes with the experience of walking the same streets with our parents since we were three years old.

Also, everyone on the bus was going to or from the football and all were Spurs fans.  Very few fans from our opponents would go to the match and, even if we met one, there was no sense of violence with, at worst, just cheeky banter.  We knew our way around the Spurs ground and soon learnt the best way to get on the bus.  If one of us was taken ill we would just ask an adult to help, knowing they would do so.  In the ground adults were very good at letting boys get a good view.  The only worry would that our rude word vocabulary might increase but, as we heard the words but did not understand what they meant, that was not a real problem.  Also, we guessed that at home if we ever used any words we did not understand that turned out to be rude ones, we would be banned from going to the matches by our parents, so we did not take the chance.

No doubt all our parents were mightily relieved when we arrived home from our first “on our own” match safely but, like all parents do, they knew we were going to be OK.

Looking back, I think I went to five league matches and two cup games (maybe only one) with my friends in the first four months of 1962 and loved every one of them.  In addition, Dad took me to see two European Cup matches.  Against Dukla Prague we were 1-0 behind after the first leg, but on a snowy evening we won the home leg 4-1, so qualified for the semi-final against the European Cup holders Benfica.  In the Portuguese capital of Lisbon, Spurs had lost the first leg 3-1, but Jimmy Greaves had two goals disallowed for offside, which Dad’s paper said were onside and should have been allowed.  The return match had 64,000 in the ground with a great and noisy atmosphere.  However, we only won 2-1 so lost 4-3 on aggregate.  It was a great disappointment and I grumbled about Greaves’ disallowed goals, which would have put us in the Final.  I was not a good loser.

Spurs won the FA Cup again in 1962 and but, again, we were not able to get a ticket for the Final, so watched it on TV.  The following day we went to see the FA Cup being paraded along Tottenham High Road, which was very exciting.

To get to Arsenal we would meet up at Turnpike Lane tube station and ride the tube three stops to Arsenal station, which had the ground right outside the tube station. I could have walked to Arsenal but just got in the habit to use the tube and enjoyed it more with friends.  The journey to and from Arsenal was much quicker than from Spurs, as the tube station was so close to the ground.  A few of us would go whenever we could and I expect we saw four, maybe even five, matches at each ground between August and Christmas – probably more at Spurs.  Our school football matches were played on Saturday mornings, so we went home for lunch after the match and met up any time from 1 p.m. to go to the match.

Firstly, there was no real bad feeling between Spurs and Arsenal fans.  I had friends who supported either team, some even gave their allegiances to both teams.  Unlike today, the notion of supporting Spurs and having to hate Arsenal or vice versa did not exist.  I liked Arsenal because they were my Dad’s team.  The fierce and hateful rivalry that exists in modern football did not occur in 1962.  We all fanatically loved our club but that did not mean we hated other clubs.

Why might this be so ?  Well, there was no social media to whip up antagonism or tribal hatred, as it does today.  Also, football was not the 24 hours a day news item that it is today.  Only two or three football matches were regularly shown live on TV each season from 1962, with occasional others being just that – occasional.  Match of the Day did not start until August 1964.  Newspapers did not have pages and pages dedicated to football.  All of the results and reports would be fitted into two pages of each newspaper and there was none of the football gossip that appears in today’s print outlets.

Maybe there would be an item about an injury to one player but none of the quotes from managers and players that stoke up so much hatred today.  There was no football preview each Saturday and the results were shown from 4.40pm until 5pm on TV read out by the programme’s linkman, with no ex-professionals making comments, often controversial, to add colour to their views.  There were no recorded highlights of football shows on TV, as Sky Sports and BT Sports did not exist.  On the radio, commentary of the second half of one game was broadcast each Saturday from 3.55 p.m.  The Saturday’s results were read out at 5.03 p.m. and 5.55 p.m., as part of the BBC radio’s Saturday’s Sports Report, of which only 20 minutes was devoted to football.  No commentary of evening matches was broadcast unless there was an extremely special match.

No club had a club shop, so there were no replica kits, club souvenirs or other club ephemera was available to buy.  Websites had not been invented.  Each club had its own Supporters Club, but they were very low key.

All matches were mainly pay at the gate with the only pre-paid seats being for season ticket holders or a set number of seats.  My first experience of needing a ticket to see Spurs was against Rangers in 1962-3 season.  There was very little segregation within most grounds, with usually ¾ of the ground being available for all supporters.  There was no segregation of visiting club’s supporters and trouble in the ground between supporters of different clubs was unheard of, mainly because few visiting fans regularly went to their team’s away games. Even local derby matches, e.g. Spurs v. Arsenal, never had any real trouble even though many visiting team’s fans attended.

Importantly there were no football phone-ins, which are used by some fans to stir up hatred of other teams.  These can really promote anger and violence.  In 1962 it was safe to go to any football ground, but that could not be said for the late 1960s, and all the 1970s & 80s.  Some grounds were still not safe to go to in the 1990s.

The 1985 Bradford City stadium fire, with a wooden stand and locked exit gates, which killed 56 fans, showed the need for stadia to be made of modern materials and have emergency procedures created and followed.  The Heysel disaster in 1985, in which hooligan Liverpool fans caused the deaths of 39 mostly Juventus fans in a decrepit stadium in Belgium, made football realise it had to do all it could to remove the cancer of hooliganism from football grounds.  Finally, the Hillsborough disaster in 1989, which killed 97 totally innocent Liverpool fans in an FA Cup semi-final, showed that fans need to be treated as customers and not potential hooligans, who had to be caged into areas of a ground with no effective safety measures.  Governments were loath to see football fans as anything but troublesome, violent hooligans but slowly the football authorities realised their responsibilities and acted.  This led to the move to all-seater stadia.

The key point was the arrival in 1993 of Sky TV to pump millions of pounds into, what were to be, Premier league clubs, so allowing the much-needed changes to occur.  Sadly, as is so often the case, it took the deaths of ordinary, football loving fans to bring about such change.  Most importantly, today’s fans are treated as customers by their team and are treated far better than 1960s fans were.

But the sad truth is that the cost of attending matches today prevents many youngsters from attending games, especially those from working class homes.  My season ticket at Tottenham costs almost £2000 per season and it is very hard to obtain a ticket unless you are a season ticket holder or a club member, which, again, costs money upfront.  If a ticket for a match can be obtained, the cost is likely to be around £100, which is almost certainly beyond the budgets of most would be fans.

The damning final statement is this.

From 1960 to 1964 my Dad would not have been able to afford to take me to see Tottenham or Arsenal play if today’s ticket prices were in place, even allowing for the difference in the value of the pound.  One young Michael Arnold would have been lost to football, as many similar lads are today.

Probably for ever.

Then, on October 11th, came the European Cup Winners Cup, which, as the name suggests, was a competition for each country’s Cup winners.  Tottenham had qualified and drew Rangers of Scotland.

The first leg was at White Hart Lane and Dad took me one cold Wednesday evening.  I was amazed when we went in the ground that there seemed to be thousands (maybe an exaggeration) of Rangers fans standing behind one goal jumping up and down and singing lots of songs.  I had never seen this before and was very impressed.  It was claimed that 3,000 Rangers fans had travelled to the game, some claimed 5,000.  No-one really knew.

The game ended 5-2 to Spurs, but the Rangers fans never seemed to stop singing.  How weird, I thought.  Spurs won the return match at Ibrox 3-2 so qualified for the next round.

This fan behaviour was soon to spread into English football, but that is for later in my story.

Our opponents in the semi-final were OFK Belgrade.  These overseas teams increased my geographical knowledge, all of whom I found on an atlas.  To date I had found teams in Yugoslavia, (retrospectively) Poland, Holland, Czechoslovakia, Portugal, Spain and Scotland.  Now OFK took my map reading back to an old friend, Yugoslavia, from the first team I saw play England three years previously.  I spent much time thinking up what OFK meant, finally deciding on Often Kick Fiercely.

Spurs won 3-1 in the away leg and comfortably defeated OFK 2-1 in front of Dad, me and 59,000 fans.  Now we were in the Final and had to play Atletico Madrid, a new city for me to find on the map.

Atletico had won the Cup last season.  The match was to be played in Rotterdam in one of the weeks we were on holiday in Perranporth.  Dad explained we could not watch the match on TV in our tents, but could listen to it on the radio.  Not much compensation, I thought.

In football I experienced a strange event.  Spurs had to play Manchester United in the first round of the 1964 Cup Winners Cup, which Spurs entered as holders of the trophy.  Dad got tickets for us to go to the evening match and, as the players came out, a sudden fog came down making it impossible to play or see.  A shame.  The players went off, never to return.

Dad and I were standing behind the goal and, just about, saw this photograph taken.  Just !

The match was re-arranged for the following week, but I was taken ill on match day.  Dad put a ‘Ticket for Sale’ advert in the newsagents window and, surprisingly, within an hour someone knocked on the door to buy it.  When he heard about my illness, he said he would buy me a programme and bring it to the house the next day, which he did.  That was what life was like in 1963’s Hornsey.

The last two Spurs games I saw before we moved were in January 1964 : v. Chelsea 1-1 and v. Blackburn 4-1, with Jimmy Greaves scoring a hat trick.  Walking home from the Blackburn match I wondered how many times I would come down from Bletchley to see Spurs that season or the next.  I hoped it would be many, but in my heart of hearts I suspected it would not be. That proved to be the case.

We moved to Bletchley, what is now part of Milton Keynes, in February 1964.
I did not play another game of football until March 1967.
I did not see Spurs again until November 1965 at Northampton and not at WHL until October 1966.

As can be imagined, I did not want to move from Hornsey, preferring to stay in the North London I knew so well and enjoyed so much.
My next few years were not happy ones.