Written : Friday, 05 November 2004
I was probably as keen on sports as any normal 8 year old boy when we moved to Ireland in 1977. Of course, my choice in the USA would have been limited to the likes of baseball and gridiron football, but luckily I emigrated at an age when I wasn’t consumed with the ignorant American attitudes towards anything foreign, and thus I was willing to embrace whatever was the prevailing popular sport on this side of the water. With the ‘78 Football World Cup in Argentina only around the corner, I guess there would have been enough hype surrounding what I would have known only as “soccer” up to that point to get me interested at first, and once I was hooked, it was to be for life!!!
Starting in a new school in a new country would be daunting for any young lad, but I took to it relatively easily. I was quick to look around for something with which I could identify with my peers, and one thing I noticed was that my classmates all seemed to follow football teams from the English League. The overwhelming majority of them either followed Manchester United or Liverpool, but I was never one to plump for the favourites. I guess I made a subconscious decision to make up my own mind as to what team I would like, and so listened out for news on English football to see if I could choose my own team so I could join in conversations between classes.
It was October 26, 1977. One of the headline sports stories from the day was that a player named Colin Lee had scored four goals in a game, which was no mean feat. Since we shared a surname, I made of the note of his team, and decided it would be my chosen one. The team was Tottenham Hotspur, popularly known as “Spurs”, and they were based in North London. Not only had Lee scored so many, but his team beat Bristol Rovers 9-0 that day, an extremely rare scoreline. What I didn’t know was that at the time they were in the “Second Division”, which was the second tier of the English League’s pyramid structure. Perhaps if I understood that they were not one of the top teams I would have reconsidered my allegiance. But once I declared my choice in school, there was no turning back.
I don’t think my fellow Blackrock College pupils were old enough to understand how the league worked either, because I don’t remember getting any kind of taunts for having picked a lower grade team. Spurs proceeded to achieve “promotion” to the top flight that year anyway, and have been there ever since. As it was a predominately rugby playing school, my football interest was confined mainly to watching tv at home and to lunchtime chats in the schoolyard with my peers.
Many argue that you only remain loyal to a team if they are successful, and since from 1981 Spurs started to go through a period of winning trophies, I guess we will never know if I would still be following them had the intervening years been barren. It is not hard to point to the FA Cup Final of 1981 against Manchester City as the cement which fully sealed my subsequent allegiance to the club.
The game kicked off as always at 3 o’clock on a May Saturday afternoon. It finished in a 1-1 draw, with Man City’s Tommy Hutchison making Cup Final history by being the first player to score at both ends, with his own goal cancelling out his earlier strike. The headline of the day, however, was the long face of Spurs’ Argentinian midfielder Ricky Villa as he was substituted with Spurs losing 1-0; he was visibly gutted at being made look as if he had somehow let the team down. Well he was to get a second chance, one which he was to grasp with both hands.
What a game the replay was the following Wednesday night. We went ahead 1-0, then they got two, then Crooks equalized. Ten minutes or so left, enter Ricky Villa. He picked up the ball near the edge of the penalty area, dribbled effortlessly around the despairing lunges of at least four City players, and casually slipped the ball under the advancing goaltender Joe Corrigan. There was no time left, Spurs had won the Cup. I was understandably over the moon, even though I was alone as my grandparents were up in bed!
My boys have won a few things since, the highlight being the UEFA Cup, a pan-European tournament, in 1984, beating Belgian side Anderlecht in a thrilling penalty shoot-out (which, to their credit, my grandparents stayed up to watch). Another good day was March 21st, 1999, the actual day of my 30th birthday, when they beat Leicester 1-0 to lift the League Cup. The winning goal came in the last minute and resulted in my two kids looking at me as if their Daddy had been replaced by a screaming lunatic!
I don’t know how I’d feel if Spurs were ever to win the coveted Premiership trophy; their last triumph goes back to 8 years before I was born. In baseball, the Boston Red Sox recently broke a jinx of 86 years to win the World Series, and my 50 year old cousin Charlie said he actually wept.
© JL Pagano 2004
