- Feb 1, 2005
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A season with Spurs 1984/85 (Part 1)
This is the story, as I remember it, of our title challenge of 84/85, i've included some of the things that I saw on our travels, some were funny, others would have earned you a spell in the pokey. I guess the term is 'warts and all'. I hope you'll forgive me the odd inaccuracy, this all happened over 25 years ago. Back then the league season was 42 games so I'll split this into 4 parts or so in order not to have something akin to War & Peace in length for you to wade through.
I'm not sure what I felt about the coming season in August 1984 as we travelled up to Goodison Park for our opening day fixture at Everton, Keith Burkinshaw had left after winning us the UEFA Cup and Spurs had seen fit to promote from within, with Peter Shreeves getting the gig. The 'Burkinshaw's Blue & White Army' chant is still among my favourites and it just didn't feel the same to me. I'd seen a few games with Terry Neill in charge but Burky was basically the only manager i'd ever known. Is it wrong that I still love him so much?
We kicked off the season away to Everton, who themselves had just won the FA Cup and who, as it would turn out, would be our main rivals for the title. This one we went up to on the rattler and ended up in some pub near the station, The Arms of Man? Legs of Man? Something like that.....Anyway, it was all good banter, we were chatting to a group of Everton fans, a couple of whom turned out to be Stewards and one of then told us some joke that I can't remember anything about other than the punchline which was something about Spurs not having won at Goodison for years. Well that was about to change.....
I remember it was a gloriously sunny day and before the game the Everton Youth team paraded the FA Cup and FA Youth Cup around the ground, a few nutters were throwing coins at the cups as if it were some sort of coconut shy, I saw one tight git asking if anyone had change of 50p........give me strength......IIRC this game saw the start of the song 'All things wise and wonderful, all creatures great and small, Tottenham won the UEFA Cup and Arsenal won fuck-all....again'
We won the match 4-1, with new signing John Chiedozie scoring, along with a goal by Mark Falco and a couple from Clive Allen. The journey home was a good one.
Next up were Leicester City at the Lane and as usual with Spurs, nothing is as straight forward as you think as we drew 2-2 with Graham Roberts notching both goals. Four days later, it was Norwich at home which gave us a chance to put the disappointment of the Leicester game behind us, which we duly did, running out 3-1 winners in front of a paltry 24,000 crowd courtesy of Chiedozie, Falco and Tony Galvin, so 7pts from our first three games. Not too shabby, I can't remember where it put us in the table, certainly up there although we weren't yet in a position where we thought we were challenging for the title.
Our next two games consisted of an away day double bill to Sunderland and then Sheffield Wednesday, we lost the first at Roker Park by 1-0 and the second by the odd goal in three, Mark Falco, who we affectionately called 'dobbin' scoring for us. That left us 10th in the league, with Arsenal sitting top. A dozen or so of us had hired a mini-bus for these games, a trend that was to continue throught the season.
After losing two games, a home fixture against QPR seemed just what we needed to get back to winning ways and we duly eased to a 5-0 win with doubles for Falco, Clive Allen and a goal from Micky Hazard. Amazingly, this was enough to put us top of the league for 24hours!
Next to Villa Park, the first time i'd ever been there, it was and still is, a proper football ground so we stuffed the mini bus full of beers and as usual, had drunk ourselves stupid and sung ourselves hoarse by the time we got to the game, which we won 1-0 to go back to the top of the league on goal difference from Nottingham Forest and Arsenal. 'Tottenham, Tottenham, top of the league, Tottenham, top of the league' was belted out from the terraces and it was quite exciting, as we'd Luton Town at home next, we'd started to get a little bit of a buzz on about it all.
Games against David Pleat's Luton were usually full of goals and a 30,000 crowd were treated to six, with Spurs getting four of them, which kept us top, still only on goal difference from Forest and Arsenal with Man Utd, Sheffield Wednesday and Everton a further 2 points back making up the top six.
On 6th October, we travelled down by train to the Dell, we couldn't get the mini bus, the guy renting it out had got the hump clearing out empty beer cans and vomit and had banned us for a week. The police were waiting at the platform in London confiscating booze from football fans getting on the train to Southampton so this guy necks 3/4 of a bottle of Pernod and gets on the train, spots two old biddies sitting together and asks if they were Lesbians. I wet myself as they both laid into him with their handbags. Once that was sorted, he thankfully passed out and spent the rest of the journey in a coma, although our troubles weren't over yet, he managed to piss off the bus driver on the journey from Southampton station to the Dell, who pulled the bus over and told us to get him off his bus before he knocked him out. The guy was built like Bluto out of Popeye, so we ended up walking the last mile or so, with us promising we'd kick his arse if he didn't behave himself.
To make a shitty day worse, we lost 1-0 we heard that the Goons had won, a Spurs fan had been stabbed and the journey home took ages. So now we were 3rd, three point behind the Scum and our next game was at home to Liverpool who were surprisingly down in 11th place 5 points behind us.
When I looked it up, I still can't believe only 28,000 turned up to WHL to watch this one, I can't remember much about it other than we won 1-0 thanks to Garth Crooks which sent us back to the top of the table on goal difference again, but only for 24 hours, Arsenal reclaiming top spot with a win on the Sunday, leaving us in second place after 10 games with 19 points and a goal difference of plus 11.
So, you've just lost top spot to your most hated rivals, you need to win your next game. And who do you play next? Yep. Manchester United. At Old Trafford. We'd talked the mini bus guy around for this one, promising him we'd give his vehicle a good thorough clean before giving it back to him, a promise fate had a hand in helping us keep as halfway there the rozzers pulled us over on the motorway and gave us the choice of either handing over all alcohol or turning back for home. Outside the ground was rammed with supporters queuing to get in and the fact that the Greater Manchester Police had seen fit to station their version of the 7th Cavalry in the form of about 20 burly cozzers on these great big shire horses in amongst us, these nags couldn't have had sex for ages because they were as frisky as hell, stamping, neighing and making those funny snorting noises and let me tell you, having one of them stamp on your foot isn't funny.
We got in eventually and the game itself wasn't up to much, we probably deserved a point but got nothing as Mark Hughes slammed in the winner which put us down to 5th place and six points below Arsenal who stayed top. It looked like our flirtation with a title challenge was over.
Little did we know that we were about to go on an amazing run of results.........
To be continued..........
This is the story, as I remember it, of our title challenge of 84/85, i've included some of the things that I saw on our travels, some were funny, others would have earned you a spell in the pokey. I guess the term is 'warts and all'. I hope you'll forgive me the odd inaccuracy, this all happened over 25 years ago. Back then the league season was 42 games so I'll split this into 4 parts or so in order not to have something akin to War & Peace in length for you to wade through.
I'm not sure what I felt about the coming season in August 1984 as we travelled up to Goodison Park for our opening day fixture at Everton, Keith Burkinshaw had left after winning us the UEFA Cup and Spurs had seen fit to promote from within, with Peter Shreeves getting the gig. The 'Burkinshaw's Blue & White Army' chant is still among my favourites and it just didn't feel the same to me. I'd seen a few games with Terry Neill in charge but Burky was basically the only manager i'd ever known. Is it wrong that I still love him so much?
We kicked off the season away to Everton, who themselves had just won the FA Cup and who, as it would turn out, would be our main rivals for the title. This one we went up to on the rattler and ended up in some pub near the station, The Arms of Man? Legs of Man? Something like that.....Anyway, it was all good banter, we were chatting to a group of Everton fans, a couple of whom turned out to be Stewards and one of then told us some joke that I can't remember anything about other than the punchline which was something about Spurs not having won at Goodison for years. Well that was about to change.....
I remember it was a gloriously sunny day and before the game the Everton Youth team paraded the FA Cup and FA Youth Cup around the ground, a few nutters were throwing coins at the cups as if it were some sort of coconut shy, I saw one tight git asking if anyone had change of 50p........give me strength......IIRC this game saw the start of the song 'All things wise and wonderful, all creatures great and small, Tottenham won the UEFA Cup and Arsenal won fuck-all....again'
We won the match 4-1, with new signing John Chiedozie scoring, along with a goal by Mark Falco and a couple from Clive Allen. The journey home was a good one.
Next up were Leicester City at the Lane and as usual with Spurs, nothing is as straight forward as you think as we drew 2-2 with Graham Roberts notching both goals. Four days later, it was Norwich at home which gave us a chance to put the disappointment of the Leicester game behind us, which we duly did, running out 3-1 winners in front of a paltry 24,000 crowd courtesy of Chiedozie, Falco and Tony Galvin, so 7pts from our first three games. Not too shabby, I can't remember where it put us in the table, certainly up there although we weren't yet in a position where we thought we were challenging for the title.
Our next two games consisted of an away day double bill to Sunderland and then Sheffield Wednesday, we lost the first at Roker Park by 1-0 and the second by the odd goal in three, Mark Falco, who we affectionately called 'dobbin' scoring for us. That left us 10th in the league, with Arsenal sitting top. A dozen or so of us had hired a mini-bus for these games, a trend that was to continue throught the season.
After losing two games, a home fixture against QPR seemed just what we needed to get back to winning ways and we duly eased to a 5-0 win with doubles for Falco, Clive Allen and a goal from Micky Hazard. Amazingly, this was enough to put us top of the league for 24hours!
Next to Villa Park, the first time i'd ever been there, it was and still is, a proper football ground so we stuffed the mini bus full of beers and as usual, had drunk ourselves stupid and sung ourselves hoarse by the time we got to the game, which we won 1-0 to go back to the top of the league on goal difference from Nottingham Forest and Arsenal. 'Tottenham, Tottenham, top of the league, Tottenham, top of the league' was belted out from the terraces and it was quite exciting, as we'd Luton Town at home next, we'd started to get a little bit of a buzz on about it all.
Games against David Pleat's Luton were usually full of goals and a 30,000 crowd were treated to six, with Spurs getting four of them, which kept us top, still only on goal difference from Forest and Arsenal with Man Utd, Sheffield Wednesday and Everton a further 2 points back making up the top six.
On 6th October, we travelled down by train to the Dell, we couldn't get the mini bus, the guy renting it out had got the hump clearing out empty beer cans and vomit and had banned us for a week. The police were waiting at the platform in London confiscating booze from football fans getting on the train to Southampton so this guy necks 3/4 of a bottle of Pernod and gets on the train, spots two old biddies sitting together and asks if they were Lesbians. I wet myself as they both laid into him with their handbags. Once that was sorted, he thankfully passed out and spent the rest of the journey in a coma, although our troubles weren't over yet, he managed to piss off the bus driver on the journey from Southampton station to the Dell, who pulled the bus over and told us to get him off his bus before he knocked him out. The guy was built like Bluto out of Popeye, so we ended up walking the last mile or so, with us promising we'd kick his arse if he didn't behave himself.
To make a shitty day worse, we lost 1-0 we heard that the Goons had won, a Spurs fan had been stabbed and the journey home took ages. So now we were 3rd, three point behind the Scum and our next game was at home to Liverpool who were surprisingly down in 11th place 5 points behind us.
When I looked it up, I still can't believe only 28,000 turned up to WHL to watch this one, I can't remember much about it other than we won 1-0 thanks to Garth Crooks which sent us back to the top of the table on goal difference again, but only for 24 hours, Arsenal reclaiming top spot with a win on the Sunday, leaving us in second place after 10 games with 19 points and a goal difference of plus 11.
So, you've just lost top spot to your most hated rivals, you need to win your next game. And who do you play next? Yep. Manchester United. At Old Trafford. We'd talked the mini bus guy around for this one, promising him we'd give his vehicle a good thorough clean before giving it back to him, a promise fate had a hand in helping us keep as halfway there the rozzers pulled us over on the motorway and gave us the choice of either handing over all alcohol or turning back for home. Outside the ground was rammed with supporters queuing to get in and the fact that the Greater Manchester Police had seen fit to station their version of the 7th Cavalry in the form of about 20 burly cozzers on these great big shire horses in amongst us, these nags couldn't have had sex for ages because they were as frisky as hell, stamping, neighing and making those funny snorting noises and let me tell you, having one of them stamp on your foot isn't funny.
We got in eventually and the game itself wasn't up to much, we probably deserved a point but got nothing as Mark Hughes slammed in the winner which put us down to 5th place and six points below Arsenal who stayed top. It looked like our flirtation with a title challenge was over.
Little did we know that we were about to go on an amazing run of results.........
To be continued..........
