11.12.13

When the calendar throws up a quirky date like today’s I thought it would be interesting to see what has happened on this date in previous years. Quite a lot actually including  One European game, a record win, the Players of the South, two wars and the worse referee in history.

One date that leaps out was 1962. In that year we played our only European tie on this date. Tottenham traveled to Scotland for the second leg of the European Cup Winners Cup tie.

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We had won the first leg 5-2. In Glasgow’s Hampden Park where our three Scottish stars all received a “hostile” welcome home from 80,000 home fans. Greaves increased our lead in the eighth minute. They equalized before Bobby Smith (pictured above) gave us the lead again on the night. They equalized again before Smith got his second (1). We of course went to become the first British team to win an European the trophy that year.

We played the first of 13 league games on this date in the First Division in 1909 with Bolton Wanderers. Billy Minter equalizing for Spurs at the Lane before a crowd of 20,000. We also played Bolton in 2001 and won 6-0. In the only League Cup tie played this day. This is our biggest win over Bolton and our record win in the competition

Our team that night included the current assistant manager Steffan Freund, Sunderland’s manager Gus Poyet, as well as Ledley King, Tim Sherwood and Teddy Sheringham (2).  Les Ferdinand set up Simon Davies for the first. Ferdinand then scored a hat trick of headers to make it 4-0 at half time when he was replaced by Rebrov. An own goal before Steffan Iverson (3) finished  the scoring. Simon Davies and Darren Anderton were in sparkling form.

Other records set on the 11th December. The 1-0 win at Leicester in 1971 was our 300th away win in the First Division. Martin Peters scoring the goal.

Billy Minter Scored our first 11th December, league goal in 1909

We equaled our best result at Manchester City in 1993 with a 2-0 win, Jason Dozzell got both our goals. We returned to City in 2004 and Freddie Kanoute scored a spectacular goal from the edge of the area in a 1-0 win. This was his 50th career goal in England having started with West Ham before joining us. Kanoute was only
playing because Defoe was suspended. Manager Martin Jol said after the game “I have three strikers and want to play two of them whenever I can. A lot of clubs have four strikers and play 4-5-1 with one on the bench and two in the stand“.

Today has been a good one for players as well. Danny Blanchflower played his first game for us in a 0-0 draw at Manchester City in 1954. Four years later Chris Houghton was born. Chris now manager at Norwich served Spurs for nearly 25 years as player, coach and acting manager. Two other players have their debuts on this day Percy Humphreys and Bert Elkin  both in 1909. In the same game William Harris played his last game.

Les Ferdinand, a first half hat-trick. Before he became a regular on Star Sports

One league game that stands out in the memory was beating Chelsea at home  4-2 (4) in 1965. Partly due to the dreadful weather and an awful playing surface. Their team contained two future Spurs managers, Terry Venables (5,6) and George Graham. Alan Gilzean scored two and would have had a hat- trick but for a world class save near the end. Cliff Jones got the other two and had a hand in nearly everything that day. For our second goal he had to jump over a Chelsea defender on the floor before he could head home,

We have played twice in war-time competitions on this day. In 1915 we lost at Crystal Palace 2-4 in a London Combination game. Before the smallest crowd for a game with them with just 300 people (7) attending. Then in 1943 we won away to Charlton 2-0 on route to winning the Football League South that season.

Two other players played their last games on this day in history Charlie Rance in 1921 and Pat Corbett in 1982.

Danny Blanchflower, Debut boy 1954

Our half back from the 1940’s Charlie Revell died this day in 1999. While back in 1878 Alex Glen was born who would play in out forward line in the early years of the last century. Weirdly having beaten Sheffield United in the 1901 Cup final. On this day in the 1920/21 season (when we would win the FA Cup a second time) we played Sheffield United again, this time drawing 1-1.

Prior to the first competitive game we had played twice on this day the first time in 1897 a crowd of 1,000 saw us win 1 -0 home win in a friendly with Kettering. While two years later we beat ‘The Players of the South’ 4-1 in a benefit game for John Jones and Bob Stormont.

Anyone who saw our game the last time we played on this day in 2011 will never forget it. We lost at Stoke 1-2. The game will be remembered for the referee Chris Foy. I try not to complain about referees and I can accept they will make the odd mistake. On this day Foy made a string of major errors ( I made it eight, plus minor ones like giving corners instead of goal kicks) and they were ALL in Stokes favour. Both of Stokes’s goals came from ex-Spur Matthew Etherington. Their first goal came after another ex-Spur Peter Crouch clearly handed the ball. We had three good shouts for a penalty all turned down. Including when Shawcross stuck his arm out sideways and handed on his own line to prevent a goal. Another one where the same player physically assaulted and pulled Kaboul over. We had also had a perfectly good goal ruled offside. The Spurs players became so incensed that Kaboul was booked when he held his hands up to his eyes to suggest the ref needed glasses. Later in the game after a number of fouls that were much worse and had not been punished. Kaboul was involved in a tackle which properly wasn’t even a foul. The referee booked him again and he was off. Even the commentator said that Foy was clearly waiting for Kaboul to punish him for the earlier incident in what only be described as pretty minded revenge. The pundits in the studio agreed that it was the worse display of referring they could remember and the press agreed.This was the sort of inept performance that ruins football. Harry Redknapp was still complaining about it two years later. In addition to this Stoke had remarked their pitch to make it shorter and narrower and played their usual anti-football. All together not a good day for Tottenham or football.

COYS

Notes  1-  Some reports I’ve read of this game, suggest Les Allen got the third. Which was a good trick as one he wasn’t playing and two having rechecked the VHS footage of the game, it is Smith.
2- Edward ‘Teddy’ Sheringham - 9/12/13.
3 - Connections Norway - 26/11/13
4 - Once again one report has Jimmy Greaves scoring. Which was good even by his standards as he was out that season from 30th October to 29th January.
5 - Terry Venables - Talking Tottenham 5 - 25/10/13
6 - Terry Venables would be transferred to Tottenham late in the season and made his debut in the last game.
7- To give you an idea of how small the gate was, we played them twice more that season, both times the gate was 10,000

Thanks to THFC, THOS, BBC, Top Spurs, Mehstg.com, Bob Goodwin - the Complete Record, The Glory Glory Nights VHS,

About the author:
Keith Harrison, Nilgiris, TN
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