In Glory Game, Hunter Davies’ classic account of a season embedded with Tottenham Hotspur, there is a chapter about an away trip to Coventry.
Davies joins the Spurs fans at Euston Station in London before they take a supporters train known as The Skinhead Special. Only Spurs fans and police officers would be on board.
Davies’ book was set in the 1971-72 season, at a time when match day violence was endemic in English football. Once they reached Coventry the Spurs fans would be sparring for a fight and they knew that like-minded Coventry fans would be ready and waiting.
Davies mingled with them, from the platform in Euston to the terrace at Highfield Road, striking up conversations along the way.
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“They were all in rotten jobs, from rotten homes, all the usual things,” he wrote. “There was no other excitement or meaning in their lives.”
As Davies scratched away at the gang mentality and their attraction to trouble, he found the same ties that bind every fan to their team.
“The club call us hooligans,” one of them complained, “but who’d cheer them on if we didn’t come? You have to stand there and take it when Spurs are losing and the others are jeering at you. It’s not easy. We support them everywhere but we get no thanks.”
The skinheads wanted the same sense of attachment that all fans crave. They wanted to be part of something that was much bigger than them and, daft as it sounded, they wanted the club and the players to look beyond the street fights and the arrests for public order offences and the general delinquency, and instead pay more attention to their unblinking loyalty.
On that front they were minded to assert their rights. In those days it wasn’t common practice for players to acknowledge the fans from the pitch and that bothered the mob on the terrace. They felt like they were being taken for granted.
Pat Jennings was especially negligent in this regard until, as Davies discovered, “they all wrote to him and protested”. It must have been before Twitter. In response to this pile-on Jennings established match-day contact with a quick right-handed wave. That was all the skinheads wanted.
Davies’ book came to mind last week when the 3,200 Spurs fans who had witnessed their team concede five goals in the first 20 minutes against Newcastle, and suffer their worst Premier League defeat in a decade, were refunded the cost of their tickets by the Spurs players.
At £30 a head the vacuous PR gesture cost the players £96,000, which, for scale, is less than the weekly wage of nine of Tottenham’s first team squad.
The expense of making a 560 mile round trip from London to England’s north-east was far greater than the price of a match ticket, but in any case it wasn’t about the money. Trite post-match apologies from embarrassed players have become de-rigueur on social media in recent seasons and nobody accords them any weight.
The gesture from the Spurs players was tone-deaf and patronising and it completely misunderstood the mentality of a supporter. The money and time that supporters invest in following their team is non-refundable because those parts of the experience can’t be separated from the essential feelings.
Covering the story for The Athletic, Nick Miller wrote an interesting piece. His overriding point was that when supporters commit to a team they’re not stupid, they know the risks. In some way, they want the risk.
“Great. You’ve got your £30 back,” Miller wrote. “Now what? You still had an abysmal day, you still spent however much on the train ticket or petrol, you still got altitude sickness climbing to that bloody away end at St James’ Park, and you still support Tottenham Hotspur.”
Miller’s last point is the essence of how fans think and behave. In the face of a humiliation you condemn everything and decry everyone and question a million things, except the certainty that you won’t turn your back.
“Never again” is the lie that every fan swears and forgets. Being infuriated, or feeling betrayed, is bound up with your commitment.
After the debacle at Newcastle, and the sacking of their interim coach a couple of days later, a crowd of 61,586 turned up at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium for their next match last Thursday. Fan protests outside the ground were low-key.
The home players were booed at half-time when they trailed 2-0 to Manchester United, and lauded at the final whistle after they had fashioned an unlikely draw.
In rational terms, the last thing the players needed when they were two down, and groping in the dark for confidence, was a giant spit to land on their heads from the stands. Isn’t that when they most needed support? But it’s not a rational relationship. Supporters are needy creatures too.
In sport, pain and pleasure are fetishised in the same way. Supporters want to feel something, whatever it is.
Fan cultures differ from sport to sport and place to place. In English football, throughout the divisions, there is an admirable culture of buying season-tickets, and the months of expressed commitment that entails. Before a ball is kicked most supporters know what they’re facing: a long season of fleeting highs and dashed hope.
The numbers in the Premier League are extraordinary. In the middle of a cost-of-living crisis, 11 Premier League clubs increased their season-ticket prices for this season, and yet all of them have a waiting list of people looking to join.
The wait-time to become a season-ticket holder at Arsenal is between five and ten years. Aston Villa have 23,000 fans on a waiting list; Wolves have 10,000; Leeds have 20,000. All of these people understand the disappointments that await them. That fatalism is part of the experience.
The most expensive season-ticket in the Premier League is at Tottenham, coming in at over £2,000. On a list of season-ticket options in the League, Spurs are the second most expensive. They have 80,000 people on a waiting list.
During the summer Spurs will end up with a manager that wasn’t top of their wanted list and Harry Kane will leave. Next season could be grim.
But at some time in the future something good will happen again and the 3,200 Spurs fans who went to St James’ Park will wear their refunded tickets on their chests, like a medal from an old war. Isn’t that part of the deal?
