Spuds away

[wittonwarrior]

Well its  coming soon, but surely not as exciting as the first away of the season back in 1978/79  - yes the so called tickatape game.

I was just about to start college and on balmy Wed late afternoon I caught the 193 bus from Gants Hill -Ilford to the Odean Edmonton and walked the mile and bit this time not to dump your head in the shit but to watch the Villa at WHL home of Tottenham/Spurs.  (never quite worked out what their fans prefer to be called between the names).

The previous Saturday first game of the season and we had a fairly easy 1-0 win against Wolves.  Spurs were 2 -0 up at Forest at the same time but managed to hang on to draw 2 a piece.

If you know anything  at all about Spurs you will know that
1. Their fans are even more fickle than ours.
2. The London  media always big them up
3. The had a seedy nightclub outside the ground called Foxes after the so called soft porn star Sam Fox.

We were favourites to lose and had no Andy Gray in our line up.

Knowing that WHL at that time was a bit dodgy I paid the extra 20p to  get into the enclosure.  Should say we  had at best 150/200 fans there that night - bit different from 10 days time.

Any it was predicable the smarmy tickatape  Welcome from Shelf side and a crowd which was just below 50,000 welcomed the teams onto the pitch. Thankfully that was as good as  it got for the spuds.  Alan Evans  opening the scoring before Walks on Water, Gary Shelton and Happy face John Gregory getting our other 3 goals.  Their return  was  a dodgy penalty scored by Hoddle

What I would give for that again Saturday week.

PS we lost the home  game after  being 2-0 up.

[rougegorge]

I remember my dad taking me to that game and the atmosphere was amazing. For some reason we were in amongst the home fans and being naive and young, my dad kept pulling at me to sit down as the goals rained in.

The home return was horrible. We were walking it at 2-0 and I recall looking at the Witton Lane clock and it was after 4.30 when they got their first (when in those days 4.40 the fans were blowing for the whistle if we were winning).

[Damo70]

My first trip to White Hart Lane was the 0-2 midweek win in 1990 when I came out of the ground convinced we would win the league. I also have fond memories of the 2-0 down 2-5 win game and the FA Cup replay win there when I think Yorkie got the only goal of the game on a Monday night. At the final whistle I was giving it the big un to one of their stewards in a fairly sparse away end and went into work the next day to find my workmate and his drinking buddies (all noses) had clearly seen me whilst watching it on the telly in the Mackadown Social Club. I had taped it so got to see myself when I got home on from work on the Monday. The camera was on me for a while whilst Dave Bassett was doing giving his full time opinion. My Mum wasn't impressed when I showed her.