Jelly and ice-cream time for Spursy

It’s April 5th 2017, about 4.40pm local time in a corner of Florida that will forever be London N17. Spurs are losing 1-0 away to Swansea and the game is edging towards its close while the team they are chasing for the PL title are leading 2-1 in the toughest game left on their schedule and the one many pundits say they are likely to lose following their wobble against Palace some 4 days earlier.

I nervously pick up my phone to send the latest news by text my brother in law who is in some distant Greek tavern bereft of Spurs coverage and forced to watch the only game being shown on Greek TV, Chelsea vs Man City.

I usually try to avoid social media during games, finding it a huge distraction from the ebb and flow of the match in front of me. It tantalises when news of other games filters through with the promise of gaps widened or narrowed that never seem to come to fruition when 90 minutes are up. Maybe if I were 30 years younger and able to type with more than the index finger of one hand I would be able to produce the prodigious ‘in-game’ output of my favourite spurs tweeters but, saddled with just one reliable digit, bashing out 140 characters of perfectly spelled and punctuated text (I am the product of a grammar school education and an obsessive compulsive personality) can sometimes see 5 whole minutes of the game disappear.

So it is that I sit, eyes glued to the screen in front of me (the 60 inch one, not the 4 inch one), arse perched on no more than 3 inches of sofa-edge, spurs mug in its ‘usually’ lucky position hoping and praying for a positive twist to a game (and an evening) that promised so much and is looking more and more likely to disappoint.

Despite a season that has produced so much in the way of wins, goals, excitement, anticipation and pride there is an increasing feeling in my gut that tonight will see the return of Spursy.

I hate that word.

It’s a word that I will not use but that I expect to see a lot of over the next few hours following the game as I trawl Twitter and Facebook talking to Spurs fans the world over about tonight’s game, the love we share for our team and the way THEY (the users of Spursy) feel they have been let down. I struggle to accept why Spurs fans turn so easily to its use but, like the Y word, it is a defence mechanism honed by years of disappointment. If we trot it out when we lose we can convince ourselves (at least on-line) that we were never really in the contest in the first place, that our fate was sealed by us being forever Spursy.

But is it?

My relationship with Spursy is probably similar to most who have supported the Lilywhites over the last 30 years. I went to White Hart Lane for the first time in 1979 to see us play against an opponent long forgotten. As a childhood transplant from Glasgow my team and that of all my family came from the green half of the city but, 13 years removed from that place it was now time for me to adopt a local team and experience those glory, glory nights in N17.

And experience them I did.

FA Cups, the UEFA Cup, Charity Shields, the League Cup Final, they all came in a glorious few years that have yet to be repeated some 35 years on despite some wonderful players and managers giving their all in the intervening years.

But what the intervening years DID supply was Spursy.

Spursy is that knack of screwing it up when it seemed certain that success was yours for the taking. Not that we had a great deal of success over that period but the screwing it up part was there in abundance.

My relationship with the beautiful game was sorely tested when the violence on the terraces led to the penning in of spectators and the deaths at Heysel were followed by more at Hillsborough and Bradford. The birth of my kids (4 in quick succession) and the failure of my team created a distance between us that became a real one when I emigrated to Florida in 2004.

But before I left I wanted to take in one more glorious evening under the lights at my favourite place and so it was that I sat down to watch us face Manchester City in the FA Cup on Wednesday February 4th 2004.

Really?

That’s how we say goodbye, with the Spursiest of Spursy performances? The Superbowl of Spursy, game 7 of the World Series of Spursy. There was nothing I could do but laugh, how else do you deal with a monumental kick in the gut like that one? See ya later White Hart Lane.

And so my Spurs relationship became a long distant one, luckily fuelled by wall-to-wall American TV coverage that demonstrates just how much in love with soccer this country is becoming.

But be it near or far we remained Spursy.

When good things were started by Jol, we replaced him with Ramos, when ‘Arry was bringing us flair and excitement we went ‘strategic’ with AVB, when we were electric with Bale, we traded him for a group including Chiriches and Capoue. Let’s not even discuss Sherwood.

Spursy

But then something miraculous happens. A savoir arrives in our midst.

He takes our misshapen squad and moulds it, discards some pieces while bringing others, changes the philosophy, the attitude, the desire and matches it to his own. Becomes a mentor to players not significantly younger than himself and creates a desire to not be satisfied with ‘good enough’ or ‘close’ and to reach for it all.

Two and a half years later this group is THE BEST in my lifetime. This group does not have the trophies of the ‘80s squad but it has a togetherness and a joy that is beautiful to see. Every season we see lessons learned from the last and progress, steps forward in all areas of our development.

There is no settling for second best with this group. There is no accepting failure, even when you are 1-0 down with 87 minutes on the clock. Is the West Ham game so easily forgotten? 2-1 down after 88 in that game, eerily echoed in this.

Since Poch was appointed spurs have won 53 points from losing positions in the PL, this is 13 more than any other PL team. Take that in, breathe it, taste it.

And so it came to pass that we scored 3 goals in 6 breathless minutes giving us the win and, as a result….

I hereby denounce Spursy, it no longer describes who we are, it has expired, it is bereft of life, if you hadn’t trotted it out every time you felt let down it would be pushing up the daisies. It has shuffled off this mortal coil, run down the curtain and joined the choir invisible. It is an ex-defence mechanism.

Pass the jelly and ice cream.