Winging it like Waddle

Guest Blogger - Dave Barrett - January 2025

Supporting Spurs was always in the blood for me.   

My mum was born and raised in Crouch End, North London and was one of six siblings who always followed the Lilywhites.  Despite the proximity to the other lot in red, there was only ever one team, and the family’s passion for the club was ingrained in me from an early age. 

A Spurs fan now for over 40 years, my very earliest memory of Spurs (albeit patchy) is staying up late with Mum and celebrating Spurs win the 1984 UEFA Cup Final.  My first game would follow in 1985.  As a family we moved to Bristol and Spurs were the visitors in a charity game as they played Bristol Rovers at the old Eastville Stadium.  My first competitive game came in March 1986 as we triumphed 2-1 away to Birmingham City.  My two overriding memories from that game were Ray Clemence taunting the home fans with a smirk on his face having been abused for 45 minutes right in front of where we were situated behind the goal. The second was being mesmerized by a right winger for Spurs who ran rings around the opposition full back, scored and sported what I thought at the time was the best haircut in the world.  My love for flair players (and mullet) was born.   

Chris Waddle taught me two things – you only needed one trick as a winger to fool the best fullbacks time and time again and as an aspiring winger myself I loved watching him play.   And secondly, having no singing talent didn’t mean you couldn’t appear on Top of the Pops.  A few years later, the order by school to cut off my flourishing mullet coincided with Waddle’s sale to Marseille just a day later and to this day I do wonder if that haircut was to blame.  To all Spurs fans, I apologize. 

My years supporting Spurs have seen highs - the 91 FA cup final, the pomp of Gazza at his very best in the 90/91 season.  He remains my favorite ever Spurs player.   Two further league cup wins and crying tears of joy watching on telly that famous CL semi-final in Amsterdam.  That game for me personified the very best of football and in my opinion the most memorable Spurs performance in my lifetime.   The lows have been plenty too – the 1987 cup final loss, a game that seemed impossible for Spurs to lose, watching the club seem to self-destruct with the Venables/Sugar fallout and being in Cardiff for a League Cup Final loss to Blackburn to name a few.

In more recent times, the Poch era for me was brilliant to watch and he put the pride back in being a Spurs fan.  We were so very very close to winning the biggest prizes.  If someone had told me when Poch took over that we would make a CL final under him I would have thought, they were mad.  That period gives me hope that the glory glory nights can return in the future. 

However, the big “what if” for me will always be the stadium move.  I personally think it came at the worst possible time in my years of supporting Spurs.  That team under Poch in the final year at WHL was one or two top players away from winning the league in my opinion.  The new stadium would always mean a tightening of the finances in the immediate future with the hope it would benefit us greatly in the decades ahead.  Don’t get me wrong, the new stadium is superb, but I can’t but help think the timing may have cost us a long overdue league title.  We’ll never know. 

I write this just days before I am lucky enough to have made my next visit to “the lane” and watched Spurs v Leicester on the 26th of January (More ignominy...). 

Sure, there are issues at the club at present, it seems further investment from outside is required to take us to the next level and the lack of structure and planning from a football perspective at times just baffles me.  However, the excitement of traveling to a game, walking down the Tottenham High Road and soaking up the atmosphere never dwindles.  Ever the optimist, Spurs last 3 trophies have come off the back of average league finishes (11th, 12th and 11th) if I’m not mistaken.  This current crop certainly has the feel of a cup team and have the ability to beat anyone on their day. 

Keep the faith and come on you Spurs!

Dave Barrett