I know there are a lot of
Spurs fans out there, so you probably know all this but anyway if you don't enjoy:
1) Spurs are the 3rd most successful FA Cup team of all time behind Man U and Arsenal. They have won the competition 8 times since 1901 and have reached the final 9 times.
2) German Striker Max Seeburg joined Spurs way back in 1907 whilst still in the Southern League and became the first foreigner to play in the English Football League when Spurs were elected to join the Second Division in 1908. Of course it was Spurs who pioneered to foreign players again in the 1978 when Ossie Ardiles and Ricky Villa.
3) Tottenham Hotspur have an impressive musical past having charted numerous pop songs over the years, largely thanks to the club’s connections with the duo Chas ‘n’ Dave who released 5 singles on the club’s behalf throughout the 80’s and early 90’s. The most successful of these was the classic
“Ossie’s Dream” which got released in 1981 to support the FA Cup run and reached number 5 in the charts. The players themselves even got in on the act with Tottenham’s famous midfield pair Hoddle & Waddle, who missed a trick by releasing the single under their forename’s Glenn & Chris, climbed to number 12 in the charts with their song
“Diamond Lights”. They even made an appearance on ‘Top of the Pops’ back in 1987 and they were not the only Spurs players to have done so. Just a couple of years later in 1990, Paul Gascoigne performed a cover of Lindisfarne’s
“Fog on the Tyne” and got all the way to number 2 in the UK singles chart! The entire Spurs first team released an album to celebrate the 1967 FA Cup Final. It was recorded at the world famous Abbey Road studios and included
“Glory, Glory Halleluja” and
“Hello Dolly” as well as Terry Venables singing
“Bye, Bye Blackbird”, Allan Mullery, Cyril Knowles, Frank Saul & Eddie Clayton singing
“Maybe its because I’m a Londoner” and Greavsie’s version of
“Strollin’”. Sad but true.
4) Ossie’s dream was realised in 1981 with Tottenham’s FA Cup triumph but he allowed his joy to get to him when he celebrated by grabbing the trophy and diving into the dressing room baths, hurling the cup into the air. It smacked the ceiling and dented the rim and whenever the trophy has been photographed since, this defect has had to be slyly hidden, often with a carefully placed hand clutching the edge.
5) Arsenal Football Club made themselves permanent enemies of the Tottenham faithful when they moved their South London home at Woolwich to North London and into Spurs territory. They only fueled the hatred when, just one year later, Spurs were relegated and joined Arsenal in the Second Division. The Football Association decided to extend the First Division by another 2 teams and historically this meant that the teams scheduled for the drop would stay up instead. Somehow Arsenal’s chairman managed to persuade the FA that they should take Tottenham’s place despite only finishing in fifth place in the second division, 4 points behind third place Barnsley who stayed down. Same old Arsenal always cheating!
6) The very day in 1919 that Arsenal pinched Tottenham’s place in the First Division, the club’s pet parrot collapsed and died. The parrot had been a gift from a ship’s captain as the Spurs team returned from a 1908 tour of Argentina & Uruguay and it lived a healthy and happy life on its perch at White Hart Lane for a full 11 years before its untimely end. It’s death is thought to be where the phrase
“as sick as a parrot” came from.
7) White Hart Lane has been the home of Tottenham Hotspur for over a hundred years but, for a brief period during the First World War they had to play home games at Highbury as the Lane had been taken over as a gas mask factory (insert anti-semetic joke here). Similarly, for a short while during the Second World War, Arsenal used White Hart Lane whilst Highbury was commandeered as a First Aid and Air-Raid Precaution centre amd later as a library. Legend tells that Arsenal made the promise that, as a thank you to Spurs for accommodating them, they will always incorporate a tiny bit of blue somewhere in there kit. They always wore a bit of white and often had blue socks but, interestingly, from 1946 Arsenal changed their socks from red & blue hoops to white & blue. The design lasted for 15 years right up to 1960 but whether it was done on Tottenham’s behalf is debatable as they had worn blue & white socks previously in the 30’s. After 1960 blue only appeared in the Arsenal strip for 2 years between 1967-69 but from 1982 up to the present day there has always been a bit of blue & white in the Arsenal strip, if only in the badge.
8) It is perhaps not surprising to hear that the Premier League’s fastest ever goal was scored by Newcastle United’s prolific striker Alan Shearer when he netted in just 10 seconds against Manchester City in 2003. However, the record is shared with a slightly less likely goalscorer in Tottenham’s talismanic centre-back Ledley King who also struck in 10 seconds against Bradford City 3 years before Shearer in 2000. He has been injured ever since.
9) The world renowned football superstar that was Diego Maradona never played his foot-ball in England. However, Tottenham Hotspur FC became the only English club the great man ever lined up for when he ran out alongside the likes of Mark Falco, Chris Waddle, Clive Allen, Gary Mabbutt, Graham Roberts, Paul Allen and Glenn Hoddle when Spurs took on the might of Inter Milan in Ossie Ardiles’ testimonial game in 1986. Tottenham won the game 2-1 with goals from Falco and Clive Allen. Ardiles captained the side and Maradona wore the number 10 shirt. Despite having retired from club football a year earlier, Pat Jennings came on in the second half to replace Ray Clemence in his last ever first team appearance for the club before heading off to play for Northern Ireland in the 1986 World Cup in Mexico.
10) Originally Tottenham bore a shield with a large letter ‘H’ upon their chests that stood for Hotspur. However, in response to the popularity of the bronze statue of a cockerel that towered over White Hart Lane since 1910, the emblem was redesigned to incorporate the strutting cockerel. In 1956 it evolved into a coat of arms that added other local landmarks to the composition. A pair of lions were assumed from the Northumberland family’s arms in recognition of their involvement in the area and stood either side of the club’s badge. To the top left of the shield is a crudely drawn castle that represents Bruce Castle. Bruce Castle was built sometime in the early 16th century and has long been associated with the area. It now stands just 500 yards to the south-east of White Hart Lane stadium. In the top right there are seven trees that correspond to the seven sisters from which the district gets its name. Originally, seven elm trees stood in a circle on Pages Green, Tot-tenham. The place is considered very ancient with the elms being over 500 years old and said to stand on the site of a sacred grove, Pages Green perhaps being derived from Pagan’s Green. Interestingly, the elms were replanted to the east in 1886, the year Spurs first started playing competitively, and seven Lombardy Poplars were then planted once more on the original site in 1955, the year before the football club redesigned it’s crest to include the symbolic trees. Come on, no one knows this shit? Finally, the latin inscription that adorns the scroll at the base of the emblem reads
“audere est facere” and translates as
“to dare is to do” and probably refers to the daring exploits of Harry Hotspur who gives his name to the club.
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