BTH
Well-Known Member
Saturday, 9 May 1981. I was 14 years old. City v Spurs in the Centenary Cup Final. Even by City’s standards it was unexpected.
John Bond had arrived the previous October to oversee a 1-0 defeat in his first game, at home to Birmingham. The following Wednesday the revolution proper started, with a 3-1 win over Spurs, again at home.
The Cup Final was a heartbreaker, to put it mildly. Far better than Spurs on the day, a complete fluke saw them equalise with 11 minutes left on the clock thanks to Tommy Hutch’s own goal. They had nothing on the day and yes, we should have done the job there and then. City gave everything that day but still we couldn’t beat the b@st@rds, and yet we even applauded the broken figure of the substituted Ricky Villa off as he trooped round the pitch and off down the tunnel in front of us, at our end. The end of that game remains the biggest anti-climax I have ever experienced in my life - even now, 29 years later.
We were better than them and optimistic that we might beat them in the replay - especially with the possibility of a return for Dennis Tueart who hadn’t featured in the original game - but in reality our day had been and gone.
The replay is, of course, history but nevertheless Villa’s goal is shown and reshown by those b@st@rds at the BBC seemingly every other week. If I live to be a hundred, a heartbroken 14-year old boy will always be within me, loathing and despising Spurs and that ungrateful b@st@rd Villa.
Ask most City fans and they’ll tell you the same: after the rags, it’s Spurs they hate. Some of the youngsters might disagree. If they do they need to have it drummed into them; it’s part of our history, it’s in our DNA. It should be in the players’ hearts and minds too, but most of them weren’t born then, won’t know, probably wouldn’t care if they did.
Since then our overall record’s been pretty poor against Spurs. Of course there’ve been some memorable games: the 5-2 annihilation in 1994 and the 4-3 Cup comeback a decade later (described as one of the greatest comebacks of all time in one of the following morning’s tabloids), but I also recall I don’t how many 1-0 defeats and that 4-2 Cup defeat in March 1993 when the Umbro stand opened and fans and police horses alike were on the pitch. That, incidentally, was one of four defeats against Spurs that season. FOUR FFS!
This is what fans remember and players don’t. No-one has a longer memory than a football fan. Whether it was Graham Roberts’ stuffy winner in my first trip to the shanty ground that is White Hart Lane in August ’86 or the 1-0 defeat on the first day of the season after the 1990 World Cup when Gazzamania was still at its peak and, as a result of the media frenzy, we were on a hiding to nothing… literally as it turned out. Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose. They won 3-1 that day but that didn’t stop us being attacked in our car by Spurs’ fans as we were stuck in a traffic jam near those dodgy flats by White Hart Lane Station. It was a red-hot day and they came through the windows and even the sunroof – the b@st@rds.
So yes, I hate Spurs. In fact, ‘hate’ doesn’t really do justice to how I feel about them when I think of their tatty ground and their dreadful lemon meringue kit, their inhumane fans and their allegedly crooked manager (not their first either, I ought to point out), David Pleat and Garth Crooks, their crap Spurs Are On Their Way To Wembley single and Chas ‘n’ f***ing Dave. There’s a playing card’s width between them and the rags as far as I am concerned and there’s a line that I won’t apologise for using again, as it applies so aptly and so succinctly to my beloved City, from the 19th century poet Robert Browning: “A minute's success pays the failure of years.”
And that is why this Wednesday, the current employees of Manchester City Football Club can go a long, long way to partially healing the hurt of that heartbroken 14-year old boy who will always be within me, and that is why I cannot accept anything less than a win against Spurs...
John Bond had arrived the previous October to oversee a 1-0 defeat in his first game, at home to Birmingham. The following Wednesday the revolution proper started, with a 3-1 win over Spurs, again at home.
The Cup Final was a heartbreaker, to put it mildly. Far better than Spurs on the day, a complete fluke saw them equalise with 11 minutes left on the clock thanks to Tommy Hutch’s own goal. They had nothing on the day and yes, we should have done the job there and then. City gave everything that day but still we couldn’t beat the b@st@rds, and yet we even applauded the broken figure of the substituted Ricky Villa off as he trooped round the pitch and off down the tunnel in front of us, at our end. The end of that game remains the biggest anti-climax I have ever experienced in my life - even now, 29 years later.
We were better than them and optimistic that we might beat them in the replay - especially with the possibility of a return for Dennis Tueart who hadn’t featured in the original game - but in reality our day had been and gone.
The replay is, of course, history but nevertheless Villa’s goal is shown and reshown by those b@st@rds at the BBC seemingly every other week. If I live to be a hundred, a heartbroken 14-year old boy will always be within me, loathing and despising Spurs and that ungrateful b@st@rd Villa.
Ask most City fans and they’ll tell you the same: after the rags, it’s Spurs they hate. Some of the youngsters might disagree. If they do they need to have it drummed into them; it’s part of our history, it’s in our DNA. It should be in the players’ hearts and minds too, but most of them weren’t born then, won’t know, probably wouldn’t care if they did.
Since then our overall record’s been pretty poor against Spurs. Of course there’ve been some memorable games: the 5-2 annihilation in 1994 and the 4-3 Cup comeback a decade later (described as one of the greatest comebacks of all time in one of the following morning’s tabloids), but I also recall I don’t how many 1-0 defeats and that 4-2 Cup defeat in March 1993 when the Umbro stand opened and fans and police horses alike were on the pitch. That, incidentally, was one of four defeats against Spurs that season. FOUR FFS!
This is what fans remember and players don’t. No-one has a longer memory than a football fan. Whether it was Graham Roberts’ stuffy winner in my first trip to the shanty ground that is White Hart Lane in August ’86 or the 1-0 defeat on the first day of the season after the 1990 World Cup when Gazzamania was still at its peak and, as a result of the media frenzy, we were on a hiding to nothing… literally as it turned out. Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose. They won 3-1 that day but that didn’t stop us being attacked in our car by Spurs’ fans as we were stuck in a traffic jam near those dodgy flats by White Hart Lane Station. It was a red-hot day and they came through the windows and even the sunroof – the b@st@rds.
So yes, I hate Spurs. In fact, ‘hate’ doesn’t really do justice to how I feel about them when I think of their tatty ground and their dreadful lemon meringue kit, their inhumane fans and their allegedly crooked manager (not their first either, I ought to point out), David Pleat and Garth Crooks, their crap Spurs Are On Their Way To Wembley single and Chas ‘n’ f***ing Dave. There’s a playing card’s width between them and the rags as far as I am concerned and there’s a line that I won’t apologise for using again, as it applies so aptly and so succinctly to my beloved City, from the 19th century poet Robert Browning: “A minute's success pays the failure of years.”
And that is why this Wednesday, the current employees of Manchester City Football Club can go a long, long way to partially healing the hurt of that heartbroken 14-year old boy who will always be within me, and that is why I cannot accept anything less than a win against Spurs...