Hotspur Towers - The Texaco Cup

Another competition briefly encountered was The Texaco Cup during the 1971-72 season. The competition was devised for teams who had not qualified for European competition.  In that first season teams from England, Scotland, Northern Ireland as well as the Republic Of Ireland took part, the latter withdrawing after one season due to political pressure.
Tottenham’s brief campaign started at home to Dunferminline.

The Scottish club Dunferminline came to the Lane and were beaten 4-0 win. Martin Chivers scoring a hat trick and Mike England the other goal. Just 16,388 turned up at the Lane to watch.

The second leg two weeks later and Spurs eased to a 3-0 win. Chivers adding one more and Martin Peters scoring twice. The Scots seem to have embraced the game as 19,000 turned up despite the first leg result or maybe to glimpse the famous English players.

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 The Second round and another Scottish club, Motherwell came to Tottenham. A much closer game saw Spurs win 3-2. Peters again scoring twice and Chivers scoring in the third game in a row. A larger crowd of 19,670 attended.

Two weeks later the return saw the home side beat Spurs by 1-3. Jimmy Pearce (top) scoring our goal after 29 minutes but they pulled one back in the first half and scored twice in the second as we exited the trophy in front of 22,688 Scottish supporters. T

Tottenham had fielded a full strength side apart from Ken Hancock in goal. Ken only making three appearances in the League and was understudy for Pat Jennings.

Bill Nicholson would lead his team to third in the League that season to go with the League Cup triumph (3) and the sixth round of the FA Cup.
The final saw Wolves beat Hearts 3-2 over two legs. The following three seasons Tottenham competed in Europe and would not compete again.

The Texaco dragged on to 1975 when the sponsors withdrew and the competition was renamed the Anglo-Scottish Cup (1) and this lasted to 1981. Tottenham never entered this competition as over the years all the bigger sides slowly ignored it and the last final was won by Chesterfield who beat Notts County.

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Above - Martin Chivers

 Right - The Dunfermline away programme showing first leg action and Alan Gilzean attacking teh Scots.


Not everyone welcomed this early step of sponsorship into football, even if all the other major sports in the country had already embraced it.

Denis Howell (Labour MP and sports minister) said  “The one event that I do not expect to see sponsored in my lifet­ime is the FA Cup itself; it would hard­ly be British, though I would not be sur­prised to find the sponsorship of in­dividual clubs as a future dev­elop­ment.” (2).

One can only wonder what he would think of the current game.

A look at Tottenham in other competitions including – The Charity Shield,  The World Club Championship,  The InterToto Cup,
The Coronation Cup (Hotspur Towers 19),  The Anglo-Scottish Floodlight Cup,  The Inter-Cities Fairs Cup (Hotspur Towers 12), Football League Super Cup,
 
Can be found at link- http://www.indiaspurs.com/blog/hotspur-towers-the-archive

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Keith Harrison.
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Notes -1 – Not to be confused with the Anglo-Scottish Floodlight trophy.
 
2- Whilst the Texaco was one of the first sponsored competitions the actual first was The Watneys Cup, which Spurs never entered but the first winning captain was Dave Mackay when he moved to Derby County.
 
3- League Cup 71- http://www.indiaspurs.com/blog/hotspur-towers-league-cup-1971