From the Technical Director
Forgive my nostalgia.
Tottenham Hotspur, my favourite team, will play its final game at White Hart Lane, London, N17., this weekend.
The club is moving next door to a new stadium.
Before that, a season at Wembley.
Why Spurs has been my team since childhood is a little blurred.
My dad supports Fulham and my late mom was an Arsenal fan.
Probabilities are I chose Spurs because they were the first team I saw live, yet one of the first games I remember attending was Luton against Stoke City on a mud filled Kenilworth Road pitch, with Stanley Matthews playing for Stoke.
Years later in Toronto, I played in a charity game in which Matthews was on the opposing team.
Whatever the original reason, Spurs have always been my team. I have the cockerel tattooed on my arm and the licence plate on my car is SPURS.
As a kid, I would catch the train with my friends from Welwyn Garden City, Hertfordshire, to Finsbury Park and then get a bus and or walk to White Hart Lane.
I would wear a navy blue and white rosette, have an old fashioned wooden supporters rattle and carry a little stool.
Even though Finsbury Park is essentially Arsenal territory, hooliganism did not exist back then. It was safe, even for older fans. The atmosphere was one of friendly rivalry, not threats and abuse.
At an F.A. Cup semi-final against Manchester United in Sheffield I dropped my rosette and a Manchester United supporter stopped, picket it up and pinned it back on my jacket.
Down at White Hart Lane, my friends and I would go to the same spot inside the ground, at the front behind the metal railings, behind the same goal, put down our stools and wait for our heroes.
If we were a little late, adults would let us squeeze through and take our beloved spot. It was always the children at the front.
The match ritual was always the same. Saturdays, kick-off 3 p.m.
At 2:50 p.m., Spurs would come out of the tunnel below the navy blue banner with the white lettering that simply said: Up the Spurs.
There they were, Danny Blanchflower, Bill Brown, Dave Mackay, Maurice Norman, Cliff Jones, Bobby Smith, Terry Medwin, Terry Dyson, Peter Baker, Ron Henry, the list goes on.
As the years went by the famous names changed, but the feeling of anticipation never waned.
Alan Gilzean is another I recall, as this masterful header of the ball later became my manager at Stevenage Athletic, though neither of us were there for long.
He was the boss who liked to have us run a tortuous circuit around half a dozen milk crates until someone heaved.
He did pick me for a game against Dunstable, whose centre forward was the former West Bromwich Albion player Jeff Astle.
Watching the game against Dunstable with my dad was a friend, Paul Price, also from Welwyn Garden City.
Price played for Luton and Spurs and subsequently captained Wales. He played for Spurs in the 1982 Cup Final against Queens Park Rangers alongside Glenn Hoddle and Ray Clemence.
Again that final went to a replay, which Spurs one.
Ricky Villa declined to play for Spurs in the QPR final because of the Falklands War.
My childhood idol was Jimmy Greaves, one of the finest players to put on the white shirt of Tottenham.
He would walk in to the team today, he was that good.
I was a pretty nifty inside forward myself back then - a schemer as it was called - and was watched by Spurs through the eyes of a scout named Dick Walker, though I ended up at Charlton, albeit for a year or so, as I was just not quite good enough.
What a gentleman Dick Walker was. I would write to him and and he would reply with encouragement.
He sent me official club Christmas cards.
I still have some of those letters and cards and was looking at them a few weeks ago.
Walker, who captained West Ham, was a “Desert Rat” in World War II.
Later, when he had played his last game for the Hammers, he was disgustingly offered the job of cleaning players boots for four pounds a week.
He later coached Dagenham F.C., before becoming a full time scout for Spurs.
I once sent Walker a picture of myself with a ball at my feet and he returned it to me signed by Jimmy Greaves.
I kept that picture in a wallet that I one day lost.
Of all the treasures I have lost and never recovered, that picture is one I still greatly miss.
Walker died in 1988 under sad circumstances. He had suffered Alzheimers and become a house bound recluse.
Revered by West Ham fans in his day, he pretty much died in ignominy.
Sometimes my dad would take me to White Hart Lane.
In 1962, Spurs reached the semi-final of the European Cup - Champions League as it called now - and played Benfica of Lisbon, Portugal.
Spurs lost the away game 3-1, during which they had three goals disallowed.
One extremely cold weekend morning dad and I joined thousands of fans in a queue at White Hart Lane to buy tickets for the return leg.
My feet, wrapped in newspaper to try and ward off the chill, froze to the point of being close to unbearable. The stamping of countless cold feet could be heard for miles.
But we got our tickets and on the night of the game, jammed into the 64,000 strong crowd, dad lifted me up into the rafters. There were dozens of us youngsters up there, a veritable troop of little Tottenham monkeys.
The atmosphere was amazing. I can still feel it now. The singing. The cheering. The noise.
Benfica scored. Greaves scored, but it was ruled offside.
Spurs piled on relentless pressure in the all white strip always worn on European game nights.
Bobby Smith scored, 1-1. Danny Blanchflower scored a penalty, 2-1.
Spurs hit the bar, again they hit the bar, but it was not to be.
Hope forlorn.
Every year, during school holidays, I often cycled with friends to the Spurs training ground, then in Cheshunt.
Mom packed me a lunch and off we went.
It took a couple of hours to cycle there and back, but no matter.
Mom was a waitress for much of her life and one year the Spurs team and managerial staff booked a dinner at a hotel where she worked.
There was the team and the late manager Bill Nicholson seated at a huge dining table in a private room.
And there was I, thanks to my mom, sat at little table just a few feet away.
I also got to see Spurs in a cup final, a 1-1 tie with Manchester City in 1981. Spurs won the replay, thanks to an astonishing goal by Argentinian Ricky Villa.
I moved to Canada in the 1980s to marry a Canadian I met while vacationing in Barbados.
On my wedding day I wore a Spurs shirt.
I have gone to watch games at White Hart Lane during trips home.
My wife and her sister came with me to one incident packed game against Arsenal. Can’t remember the score, but Alan Brazil was playing for Spurs.
The last game at White Hart Lane is this Sunday, against Manchester United.
Spurs will wear a special commemorative shirt.
A special day at a special place.
On Youtube you can watch videos recalling White Hart Lane, which opened in 1899.
This one is my favourite: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SQ82khNu4rc
It includes a clip of Jimmy Greaves scoring against Manchester United in October, 1965. A wonderful individual goal in which he turned on the ball, glides past a couple of opponents before rounding the keeper and passing it with is right foot into an empty net.
I was there.
I wonder whether the Lilywhites can repeat the feat of that day, when they won 5-1 against a side that included Bobby Charlton and the phenomenal George Best.
No matter the result on Sunday, it will be a marvellous day.
Which, finally, reminds me of another enthralling Spurs name from the past, John White.
One afternoon he scored a goal that sticks fast in my memory. His shot from outside the box hit the stanchion in the back of the net right in front of me and bounced back on to the field. I swear he was looking at me as he scored.
White, a schemer, was in his playing prime when he was killed by a lighting bolt on a goal course.
As a player he was nicknamed: The Ghost.
Perhaps the spirits of the past will drift just a few yards down the road to the new stadium.