Matchday Diary: Spurs vs Everton, Carling Cup
I only told my lad he was going to White Hart Lane on the Tuesday morning so he wouldn’t get too excited. I’d taken advantage of the £5 for kids offer for that game, and managed to get a pair of tickets in Lower south stand block 25, row 18 I think. This was to be Luke’s third trip to see Spurs live, and he has still yet to see a defeat, so I was feeling confident. I’d taken the day of work, so we were able to set off extra early from West Berkshire, leaving the house at quarter to four… down the M4, onto the M25, then sat in queues for 50 minutes…. ‘Dad, do people do this everyday?’ Yes son, they do. ‘Why?’ Kids can be very perceptive sometimes.
Finally made it down the A10 and parked near the Irish Club for £8… then off to collect the tickets. It was already getting dark, and there were lots of optimistic fans queuing to collect. After the usual hassle picking up the tickets…’what name did you book them under?’ ‘what credit card was that?’ ‘The booking reference is no good apparently’ … tickets were found under the wrong name, but they were in our hands. Bosh… that was another £42 all in. Off to the Spurs shop to buy a beany for Luke’s little brother… and he wanted one too..another £9.98 gone… then food at a Burger bar… another £8. Oops, and I forgot the programme (£3.50 I think)… before I insisted I needed a beer!
So, which pub was going to allow me to take an 8 year old in? Hmmm… not the Corner Pin… but the one next door to that with the beer ‘garden’. Still, it sold cans of beer, and there were a couple of other little ‘uns in there, so I was happy. I had to explain two things here to Luke. Firstly, a beer is all part of going to footie, and secondly, ‘Yids’ is a friendly chant used by Spurs fans and not an aggressive war cry! I’m not really sure he understood what the hell was being chanted in the pub to be honest. At 7pm we left to go to the ground and watch the warm up.
Found our seats, and were able to watch the boys warming up in front of us… all very exciting for Luke. The match started… plenty of singing coming from the South stand… Everton doing OK…. Until Tom buried his chance on the half volley. Cue pandemonium… even standing on his chair Luke couldn’t see the aftermath of the goal. Best comment of the game after that was ‘who’s the new guy playing on the wing Dad… he’s pretty good?’ I couldn’t really argue with this, David Bentley was like a new player that night… he almost looked like a multi-million pound signing for once! For the pen I was able to hoist Luke onto the back of the seat in front so he could see in real time… and one of the strangest goals I’ve seen live. After that, Luke stood the whole game… no shouts of ‘sit down’ when you’re under four foot!
Final whistle, and off to find the car… for a blast home in under an hour and a half, and the lad in bed by 11.30pm, tired, but very happy…. Just like his Dad!