When Did You First Start Supporting Spurs and Why?

[Banjo]

Sure it's been asked numerous times before - but anyway!

Me? I grew up in Brum. When I was seven some friends of the family took me to see my first live football match. 4th March 1967, Spurs v Villa at Villa Park. (Three all draw, and Terry Venables had a perfectly good goal disallowed for 'offside'. Once again robbed by the Bastards in Black!)

Of course the people I went with were rabid Villa fans, so I was inclined to support 'the other' team. What also encouraged this was the kits. I like claret, but claret and blue - Yuck. After that I started following Spurs, at first on TV and in the papers, and there was style and some genuine heroes. Here's a few names to conjure with and compare with the current crop.

Jennings, Knowles, England, Mackay, Mullery, Gilzean and above all Jimmy Greaves. I was sold. I have had moments of doubt, but that's for another day!

COYS

 

[ealingspur]

honestly - my older brother was ian walker's best mate - and he came to my 7th birthday party and goalkept in a 5-a-side tournament, letting me score everytime.

 

[chrissivad]

honestly - my older brother was ian walker's best mate - and he came to my 7th birthday party and goalkept in a 5-a-side tournament, letting me score everytime.

is that what he told you :wink:

My Dad surposts Tottenham and me and my brother followed it on. Toou us to our first game in the early 90's when we drew cith Coventry 2-2

 

[Chris12345]

Dad grew up just north of London, roughly equidistant between Orient, Spurs and the Goons... he wasn't that into football, but at school, everyone has to support someone, and cos Spurs were succesful, he picked them... then followed them passively until I turned up and was very into football (tho when I was younger, I supported the players more than the team)... he told me I needed to pick one team and stick with them, so he started taking me to Spurs games! (must've been around 7/8)

Now he's a bigger fan than I am :lol:

 

[Destroyer]

I started supporting Spurs in 1981 whilst watching Ricky Villa weave his magic through the Man City defence in the FA Cup Final - i was only 7 !!!

 

[yid-4-life]

Walked into my new primary school on the first day of school in September 1983 and was confronted with a dilema. Every 1st year had to have a team and as i wasn't from a so called "football" family I had a very serious decision to make! Liverpool? Man u? Aston villa? West ham? spurs? The choice was tough, but there was just something about Tottenham Hotspur that I just couldn't put my finger on, they seemed special! All these years later and I have yet to regret supporting this wonderful team! Through everything we go through year after year there's just something about spurs that I couldn't put my finger on in '83 and still can't now!

 

[jimmy_the_yid]

FA Cup semi 1991 is the first game i remember, i was 6 and hooked.

My family are spammers but they were in the old 2nd division at the time and most people at my school in walthamstow were spurs so i followed suit. My dad still hasnt forgiven me.

 

[riggi]

My great grandad,grandad and dad support spurs... :lol:. My family are all from the East end and back then, West ham were considered an Essex team so my great grandad, wanting to support a London team, started supporting spurs.

 

[PantherX]

I started supporting Spurs in 1981 whilst watching Ricky Villa weave his magic through the Man City defence in the FA Cup Final - i was only 7 !!!

That pretty much started it for me as well....I was 11 at the time.

About two years later Spurs toured Trinidad, they trained at my school ground and I got to meet a few of the players. I can remember how excited I was to get autographs of Hoddle, Crooks, Archibald and Tony Parks.

Parks took the time to chat with me after the final game of the tour and that left a big impression on my 13 year-old self.

I was forever a yiddo after that.

 

[sheringmann]

Gazza/Linkeker 1990. AWESOME!!

 

[SlickMongoose]

Grew up in the midlands. My first footballing memory was watching Italia 90. Then I found out that Gazza and Linekar played for Spurs, so that was that.

 

[Cicada]

it's in my blood.. my mum's from Tottenham, dad's from Walthamstow, so i'm stuck..

if i could unsupprt them, at some points i wish i would, but i can't

 

[seany]

Most of my friends at primary school were Liverpool fans and i was tempted to support them but then i watched the 1981 fa cup final and that was it Spurs were the team for me and i not looked back since,i was allowed to stay up late to watch the uefa cup final in 1984 even though it was a school night.

 

[Berglad]

I'm an American and was never really that much into watching any sports more than occasionally, but decided to check out the 2006 World Cup and fell in love with the game. The moment that really sealed it for me was the Germany-Poland game where Germany dominated the game but couldn't quite find a way into the net until the crazy moments just before the end of the game where Klose hit the bar, Ballack hit the bar on the rebound, then they scored an offside goal before finally scoring a minute later to win the game and everyone (especially Klinsie!) went crazy. I was turned off by ESPN's "well obviously you only care about the US team" coverage so was more into Germany and England during the tournament.

I wasn't sure if I'd follow club football afterwards, just internationals (what was I thinking??), but after the World Cup ended I needed my fix. I did some research and was leaning towards supporting Spurs because of the 05-06 season story (the young underdogs that almost made it), Man U seemed like dicks, wasn't enamored with Arsenals players, I have a friend who's a Liverpool fan and didn't want to copy him, and though I liked Chelsea, I didn't want to pick the team that were already champions and had all the money. I'd also enjoyed Lennon's cameos in the World Cup, so after I caught a few 05-06 games, and especially the 3-2 comeback against Charlton, I was sold.

Got up early for the the 2-0 loss against Bolton and have been a yid ever since. So far, I've flown over twice to catch four games and catch pretty much all of the rest on tv, download, and stream. My first experience across the Atlantic was flying into Heathrow, getting to Euston and taking a train up to Wigan to see the 1-1 draw in the 07-08 season!

I also follow Werder Bremen (picked them because Klose was my favorite player from the World Cup and they also had Mertesacker and Frings) but not nearly to the same extent!

 

[spurs mental]

My Grandad. Not sure what the exact story was, I know he was at a game and met Pat Jennings, and that was the start of it. Was passed on to my dad, aunties and uncles. And then me. Used to watch the games with my Grandad, probably not knowing what was going on, but knowing that it was the team in white I was cheering.

We haven't been able to get my brother to support Spurs however. He likes Liverpool. :bang:

 

[BringBack_leGin]

Back in the late 1950's my grandfather Socrates, a Liverpool supporter, left his wife and two young sons in the Cypriot town of Famagusta to travel to London to do some work for the Bank of Cyprus where he was a bigwig for a quite a while. His two sons were quite football nuts already, with APOEL Nicosia being their Cypriot team, but as yet they were without an English team. They were born in 1953 and 1955 respectively, I don't know what age they were at the time of this tale as I am unsure of when my grandfather came to London, but I'd reckon no older than 7 and 5, no younger than 5 and 3.

Upon my Grandfathers return to Famagusta, the two boys asked who what football he had watched and who had impressed him. Bill Nicholsons Tottenham Hotspur was the answer.

Fast forward over a decade. It's 1970, Spurs have won had success both domestically and abroad, all the time being followed from a distance by the two young boys who had become two young men. While they admired other players and clubs, especially George Best and Manchester United, the only names they really cared about where Danny Blacnflower, Jimmy Greaves, Dave Mackay, Pat Jennings, Cliff Jones, John White and the other heroes of the great Tottenham Hotspur. The elder of these two young men, now approaching his seventeenth birthday, was my father, Rolandos.

As he was now of age, he boarded a plane and came to London to begin his GCE Advanced levels in economics and mathematics, before going on to study to become a chartered accountant. On his second day in the country, he attended a Beach Boys concert. Within a week, he had been to his first Spurs match. By the end of the 1970/71 season, he attended as we lifted the League Cup for the first time, and he has been at every single final since, and been a season ticket holder for well over 30 years now. He has seen every single name that came after the 60's with his own eyes, and his love of Spurs has always been one of the driving forces in his life.

In the meantime, when war broke out in Cyprus as a result of the Turkish invasion in 1974, he went back and collected a young woman named Joanna, two years his junior. They lived together in London, got married, bought a house, and on 27th August 1985 they had their first born child, a blond haired, blue eyed boy. They named him Elio.

And so I existed. Pretty cool huh. One minute nowhere, the next minute a shitting, puking, crying, eating machine. So little has changed, but that's anothet story for another time.

I have no idea what age I was when I began to support. It was sometime before the age of 5 (though I attended my first match in 1988 as my father was adamant that despite being only just about 3 years old/ not quite 3 years old, I would witness football history with Gazza's first kicks of the ball in a Spurs shirt at Newcastle. I remember nothing). All I know is that one day at school, all the boys were saying 'i support Man U, I support Arsenal (too many of those)' etc and I decided on that spot that I'd be a Spurs fan like dad. It had been drummed into me my whole life by my dad, and it culminated in that decision on that moment in my school playground. Needless to say, being the kid that supported Spurs did not help my popularity in my early years.

Time passed. Despite having been (apparantly) to about 40 games already, the first match I can remember being at was November 1994 when I was 9. It was Gerry Francis first game in charge, at home to Aston Villa. We fought back from 3-0 down to equalise, only for Dean Saunders to score a 93rd minute winner for Villa. This is the first time I cried because of Spurs. It was certainly not the last, and often for the same reason.

It's the summer of 1997. We've sold Sheringham, and brought in Ginola and Ferdinand. Up untill now, I had only ever gone to Spurs because my uncles ticket next to my dad in the West Upper was available, usually owing to his regular trips back to Cyprus for whatever reason. However, this summer I received an early birthday present. My father had acquired a seat two rows back, also on the ailse of block 5. We had 3 season tickets in close proximity. I was a season ticket holder. Brilliant.

We lost the first game of that season at home to Manchester Utd, Sheringham missed a penalty and was roundly booed throughout.

Since then I have been to every single home league and cup game, 4 or 5 away games a season (the best of which still remains a 6-2 away victory over Wimbledon in which Klinsmann scored 4), 2 FA cup semi finals, both losses at Old Trafford, and 4 league cup finals, 2 won and 2 lost. I have seen us flirt with relegation, I have seen us nearly break the top 4, I have witnessed wonderful moments and I've seen atrocities, not to mention 8 managers and 3 caretakers managers.

The 3 seats have become 2, as my uncle now sits in the family part of the North Stand with his 17 and 14 year old boys, and has done for a few seasons. We park about a mile away for every home game, 5 of us in my uncles Corsa, at around 40 minutes before kick off, and we stroll to the ground, standing outside with 20 minutes to spare, and in our seats with about 10 minutes to spare.

Even my grandad, living in Nicosia, Cyprus, keeps up with Spurs results more than any other team in England now. He likes Harry Redknapp by the way, and he's the best human being I know, so if Harry is good enough for him, he's good enough for me. Tottenham Hotspur Football Club is not just who we support, it is a part of our family, a part of our blood line, and we are a part of it. Come On You Spurs!

 

[am_yisrael_chai]

My grandparents came to London in 1960, my dad was 12, he was Jewish and living in Stamford Hill, who else was he going to support other than Bill Nick's mighty Spurs.

 

[haxman]

I started supporting Spurs in 1981 whilst watching Ricky Villa weave his magic through the Man City defence in the FA Cup Final - i was only 7 !!!

Snap! Although I was only 6 at the time.

 

[Mr-T]

In the late 70s I was becoming aware of football, I knew of spurs, arse, charlton (coz of me dad) and liverpool. I liked the name tottenham hotspur, it sounded different and cool plus I knew 2 people who supported arse and bindippers and they were pricks - I was only 5 in 1978.

Then a couple of years later, Hoddle, Ardiles, Archibald, Crooks and particularly Villa made sure I was hooked watching 81 final and replay.

 

[SpotSpur]

Ever since i remember, loads of people around me supported Spurs, including my Mum and Dad. Wasn't really into football when i was younger, but took more interest when i got my first Spurs shirt. Watched a few games, then was instantly hooked. Don't regret it one bit. Coys!