Tottenham Away – Happy 50th Anniversary

“Now they’re in Tottenham. Three miles behind enemy lines. Between them and safety stand 20,000 cops and 100,000 sworn enemies. They’ve got one way out. They’ve got one chance. They’ve got one night.”

I am paraphrasing of course, but the above quote is the tagline from the 1979 movie, The Warriors. And that is exactly how it felt leaving Shite Hart Lane last night. Anyone who has ever been brave or stupid enough to go to North London’s largest toilet will know exactly what I am talking about. It’s like The Warriors. But with more shit on the pavement. If you have never been to the North London Derby at their place, please watch this video to get a feeling for what it is like…

So how did I end up being surrounded by thousands of blood-thirsty scum fans pretending to be one of them? Put the kettle on, make yourself a cuppa and let me talk you through it.

It started when absolute top Gooner and all round good bloke @StevieGooner told me that he had a spare for Tottenham away. Naturally, I bit his hand off. I recently took my mum to Old Trafford and she now has the Arsenal bug again and was practically begging me to get her a ticket for Spurs away. I tried to explain to her that Man Utd fans and Spurs fans are a completely different breed and that while one set of fans are content to sit there in silence even though they are winning 2-0, the other set are more pre-occupied with Arsenal and more specifically Gooners to care about what is going on on the pitch. I told her about the last time I was there for the Carling Cup (stupidly in full colours) and the Gladiators Gauntlet leaving that disease-ridden hole after the game…

I didn’t end up finding a ticket for sweet mama Gooner so I braved it alone. When I say alone, I mean I met up with some good lads- Welshy, Scotty, Andrew, Gav, Bill, Luke (!) and a couple of others for a cheeky drink in Finsbury Park. But before we had a drink, Welshy (@Welsh_Gooner on Twitter) took me for lunch in Finsbury Park and we sat on the grass eating our picnic like a modern couple, discussing the merits of Bendtner, Eboue and playing Vermaelen as a Defensive Midfielder. (I am for it and he thinks I am mental.)

Once we had finished our gay picnic, we strolled along hand in hand to the Twelve Pins to meet with the others at the ridiculously early arranged time of 3pm (we were a bit late) and then the beer started to flow. It was all good spirits and everyone was having a good sing-song and we tried to have a bit of a singing match with The Blackstock opposite, singing “WE’RE THE TWELVE PINS, THE TWELVE PINS, THE TWELVE PINS HIGHBURY,” and we smashed them. Probably because they didn’t know what we were doing. The highlight of the sing-song was in the middle of all the singing, a Spurs fan strolled through a hundred drunk Gooners wearing a Spurs shirt. I would estimate around 18 pints were “wasted” on him. I have no idea what he was thinking! It didn’t get nasty though, just singing abuse at him and throwing beer his way- relatively good natured compared to what might have happened.

Suitably drunk, we walked to Finsbury Park tube to travel one stop to Hell, aka Seven Sisters. We had agreed it safest to go undercover so I changed out of this T-Shirt…

We stopped singing when we got to the tube station and managed to be quiet for a solid two minutes at least until the tube arrived. Then we got on the tube, still silent and noticed a few people in Spurs shirts. The sight of this was too much for one of us *cough*Luke*cough* to take and so he broke our cover, that had lasted for all of one hundred and twenty seconds and screamed at the top of his lungs, “WHAT DO YOU THINK OF TOTTENHAM?” Well, everyone knows that there is only one answer to that question, so obediently we all shouted, “SHIT,” along with various other undercover Gooners dotted around the train and within two seconds, our tube carriage had become a mobile North Bank hurtling towards hell. Apparently, when the wanky Tottenham Hotspur went to Rome to see the Pope, he was quite rude to them. In one Gooner’s excitement, while using the roof of the tube as a substitute to clap along in time to the songs with, he caught the light cover and released the equivelent of a bag of sugar of black dust dating back to the last time Spurs won the league all over himself. We didn’t laugh. Honest.

As the tube pulled into Seven Sisters, we decided that this time we really would keep our heads down for safety reasons and keep our cover intact. As Axel Foley would say, we were going deep, deep undercover. We maintained our cover as we got off the tube and as we went through the ticket barriers. I’d like to tell you that we got up the stairs of the tube station still undercover, but I’d be lying. Yes, we started singing, “HELLO, HELLO, WE ARE THE ARSENAL BOYS” as we saw some faces we recognised at the top of the stairs and before we knew it, we had a hundred Arsenal fans singing along. The problem was that we had left too late for the Police escort as from past experiences, we didn’t want to be kept by the police from getting inside the ground and missing anything. The plan was to stay incognito and stroll up to the turnstiles and just slip in and watch the whole match. That was the plan anyway. We brought attention to ourselves and managed to get our very own police escort, meaning that the game had already started by the time we got to the shithole. And that place really is a shithole on another level.  We were scattered all over so agreed where to meet for a halftime beer and I ran into the toilet, absolutely bursting and as I opened the valve, I was met by the loudest cheer I had heard that night. I didn’t know whether people were that impressed by “Little Keith” that they felt the need to applaud and shout or if we had scored. I chose to believe the first reason and I’m 35% sure I zipped up before running up the steps onto the Lower Tier to see if we had or not. It put a new meaning to the song, “WE’LL BE RUNNING ROUND TOTTENHAM WITH OUR WILLIES HANGING OUT.”

I started trying to find roughly where my seat was and as I did so, I heard an even louder cheer. At this point I was convinced that Little Keith was still on display and that everyone had seen it. Until I turned around and realised that the Scum had scored. For fuck sake, I had missed both goals and here I was in the league’s most hateful stadium with my todger on display. I was in the toilet for the first goal. Well, technically we all were. Surely the night couldn’t get any worse. Right? As Van Der Fart scored his goal, I turned and saw him run straight to us Gooners and hold his finger up, telling us to “Shoosh” and I stood there hurling abuse at him for it. With my todger out. Proud moment.

Well the rest of that first half was simply breathtaking. Brilliant end to end stuff and the stuff that derbies are made of. I was left exhausted by half time. With each of our goals, I surged forward, ending up rows in front of where I had been along with everyone else. We celebrated HARD. I have bruises on my shins to prove it. Random strangers were getting hugs and kisses on the head galore. THIS is why we keep coming back, week after week, season after season for moments like this. Half time came and I met Scott and Andrew for a pint… of Oasis as they had run out of beer! We managed to blag a free Hot Dog and I dished out some balloons, 50th anniversary flags and party poppers to help celebrate the 50th anniversary of the scum winning the league for the only time in their history. In my bag, I had a five foot tall five and zero. I wasn’t going to tempt fate and blow them up too early though and get the cameras on me wearing a Mickey Mouse party hat with a bunch of balloons on me, crying as we went 7-3 down. Funny enough, as we went 3-1 up, I thought to myself, “Shall I tweet, ‘Two goals up against the scum. Surely we can’t throw that away can we.’” I thought better of it though and I’m glad I did. You can never count your chickens with this current team. I guess that’s part of the excitement. Apparently.

Tottenham’s second goal was incredible. Not because it was a particularly good goal or anything like that. But because it was scored by a human blimp. I saw him gliding (yes gliding, I could not confirm if he had legs under his torso) sideways across the pitch like the Good Year Blimp caught in a gust of wind and I watched as the ball bounced off one of his breasts and went into the back of our net. Rumours that the KFC in Tottenham Hale sold a month’s stock last night from someone celebrating were unconfirmed at the time of writing this.

Szczesny (yes I had to google the spelling again) made some brilliant saves and kept us in the game and probably stopped us losing. I was particularly impressed with the save that he made with his Polish testicles. I looked at the guy next to me and said, maturely, “Massive bollocks” and held my hands up to demonstrate the size of said Pole’s testicular region. He nodded wisely. There was a moment towards the end of the second half when the ball went out for a throw in and Wenger was getting the ball in his techical area, when Clive Allen shoulder barged him quite hard, coming into our area to get the ball. I don’t think many others spotted it but I was outraged by it. I don’t know if it was captured on the TV but Wenger was clearly upset by it. As if it wasn’t enough for him to endure the Scum singing THAT song at him for the night. A funny moment was when Gallas was trying his best to score against us and we sang, “PLAY FOR A BIG CLUB, YOU USED TO PLAY FOR A BIG CLUB.”

I came away from the Liverpool game and the Sunderland game angry and deflated and feeling very negative about our team. I wasn’t at the Blackburn game but I was angry after that game too. I think part of my anger was down to effort on the player’s parts. But last night, I don’t think you could pick out a single player who wasn’t putting in a real shift. Our boys bust a gut last night, especially for the end of the game where Spurs were really coming at us. I don’t think Bendtner or Arshavin done particularly well, but they had been brought into a game that was 100mph with only ten minutes on the clock and Bendnter was once again playing out of position so I cannot blame them. I actually think we lost our shape a bit without Samir and Theo and I would have liked to have seen Theo running at those tired Spud legs at the end of the game, but Wenger had to do something so I have no complaints. If we put in this amount of effort from now until the end of the season, I will be happy with wherever we finish. I have conceded the league now and we are playing for pride and not having to play in any Champions League qualification games a couple of weeks before the start of the season.

I was relieved when the final whistle went as I could see them doing the unthinkable to us and I wouldn’t have been able to handle that. As we left, a Gooner had a seat that he had ripped out from the stadium. The steward asked him what it was and he replied, “It’s mine. I brought it with me.” The steward then said fair enough and the Gooner then went home with a new souvenier. I met up with Scotty, Andy and Welshy and together we braved the gauntlet of vile, disgusting scum that had lined up waiting to spit at us, punch us and do their usual tricks. We somehow managed to find ourselves on the wrong side of the police line, surrounded by Scum. Would they be able to smell the class and success on us that would give us away as Gooners? The best plan of action is to match the expressions of their ‘fans’ and try to blend in. I assumed that they would be gutted to have drawn at home to a team that scored three times past them as they are now a bigger club than us and the balance of power has changed as they keep telling me. I was really confused to see sheer delight and joy on their faces and people celebrating as though they had won the league. Was this some kind of mind game that the Scum were playing?

We matched their facial expressions but I drew the line about singing along to “THREE ONE, AND YOU FUCKED IT UP.” Then the funniest incident of the evening happened. It proved to me that sometimes, violence is funny. The scum that had lined up looking to fight Gooners were throwing stuff into the crowd of gooners and spitting and running at them and all the usual shit that they get up to. Then we saw an old Spud with a younger Spud. The younger spud was frothing at the mouth and grabbed the shoulder of another bloke and shouted, “GOONER CUNT!” and spun him round and smacked him hard in the mouth. As he spun him, I saw that the “Gooner Cunt” was wearing a white shirt with a logo that had a chicken standing on a beachball. Yes, this idiot Spud had started a fight with another Spud, thinking he was a Gooner. I didn’t laugh.

We then started the three mile walk from Shite Hart Lane to the nearest Tube Station and to be honest, next year I think I’m going to create a justgiving page and get sponsored to do this walk. You can stick your marathons up your arse. True stamina is judged on surviving that long walk, outnumbered, with random spuds waiting for you in every alleyway and shopfront and pub along the route. I could make a packet for a charity next year doing that walk. We made our way back with these words from The Warriors in our minds…

“Now they’re in Tottenham. Three miles behind enemy lines. Between them and safety stand 20,000 cops and 100,000 sworn enemies. They’ve got one way out. They’ve got one chance. They’ve got one night.”

We made it out alive.

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