Shirts, Shorts and Spurs. Roy Reyland
went to my first game, with my brother-in-law, Roger.
Roger was a massive Spurs fan and a huge instigator of my love for the club. One day he took me to see Spurs play Fulham at the Lane. I remember it because Fulham played in the opposite colours to us: dark-blue shirts, white shorts and blue socks. Even as a kid, I recall how I respected that perfect symmetry. Soon afterwards, Roger took me to see a midweek game, and it was an event that changed my life forever. I remember how cold and dark it was in Tottenham that night. We walked up the stairs and suddenly I was blinded by the floodlights. Then the team ran out, resplendent in their all-white kit… it was such a dazzling vision, an almost religious moment. I expect you’ve felt those same intoxicating feelings.
Spurs had finished third in the league the year before, just behind Manchester United and Nottingham Forest, and we had won the FA Cup. We had signed Mike England from Blackburn Rovers and Terry Venables from Chelsea, and we would have won the Double again had Spurs not thrown their chances away in October and November in a series of needless home defeats.
My first season watching Spurs was, in comparison, a disappointing season. However, it was a year all Spurs fans will remember for a very special goal – scored by goalkeeper Pat Jennings in the Charity Shield. In a mixed season, Spurs destroyed West Ham 5–1, Burnley 5–0 and Southampton 6–1 in April, yet Greaves scored only 23 goals from 39 appearances, and Spurs finished just seventh in the First Division.
I used to love going to White Hart Lane more than anything in the world. I remember standing on a stool and getting completely carried away by the swell of the crowd. Sometimes, when something happened on the pitch, the crowd would suddenly lift me off my feet and we would all sway forward and sway back, and I was carried around on a wave of Spurs supporters. Somehow,
I’d always end up back at the same place, and my feet would land right back on the stool! I’d always try to get in front of a barrier, because if there was a surge you’d be protected. At one big game, the ground was packed, and they lifted a lot of us kids in front of the wall to watch the game from the side of the pitch. I could smell the rich aroma of the turf. It all seemed so close, and the dream seemed so achievable.
My sister bought me my first Spurs kit when I was 12, but by then I was playing for the school team and, like all young boys, I secretly harboured a dream of playing in that kit for real. I wanted to play for Tottenham Hotspur, and I wanted to be Jimmy Greaves. All those nights playing up against the wall in the street started to pay off, and I was playing regularly for Somerset School in Crayton Road, right opposite Bill Nicholson’s house. We were a phenomenal school team, and I don’t remember losing once. Many of the team were picked to play for Tottenham Boys, Middlesex Boys or London Boys, depending on how good they were. And I was delighted, aged 13, to be invited to train with Tottenham Boys at a local school called Rowland Hill every Saturday morning.
The coach, Dicky Moss, later became goalkeeping coach for the Spurs Schoolboys. He seemed about 150 years old to me, with long General Custer hair, and a lisp… he was such a character. For a brief time it looked like I might make it as a professional: I was left-footed, strong on the ball and an asset to any team. To play for Tottenham Boys was a dream come true, though I remember I was disappointed we never had the cockerel on our shirts. Instead, Tottenham Boys played in blank white shirts, but, like any local boy, I dreamed of pulling on that famous shirt, and scoring for Spurs.
I did my best to impress the Spurs scouts who flocked down to watch us. During my first game for Tottenham Boys, I was on the left wing and a boy called Peter Tunget crossed the ball and I leapt up to header it, and the ball flew just over the bar. The balls in those days were heavy and stitched together with lace, and this one nicked my left eye. It was my first touch for Tottenham Boys, and it had ripped open my eye. I finished the game with a permanent memento of the game – I’d played for Tottenham Boys and I had the scar to prove it.
Eventually, I got invited to train on Tuesdays with the real Tottenham Hotspur, and my dream looked like it might come true. The Spurs’ youth team trained on a hard ball court, and all the Spurs coaches were there. Just the fact that you were associated with Tottenham Hotspur was amazing and I walked with a skip in my step during those beautiful days. I showed great promise, and a few people might tell you I was destined for a professional career. Alas, the months progressed and so did the other boys, but it was becoming clear I was not meant to become a six-footer and, tragically, because of my size, I was released.
Of course, I was heartbroken. Roger used to stand me up at the Park Lane end every weekend, and every game I saw I’d dream of pulling on that shirt. The only player that made pro level from Tottenham Boys was Stevie Phillips. He lived on Crayton Road, near Bill Nicholson. ‘Eggy’ Phillips, we called him, although I can’t remember why. Later he made his debut for Birmingham City, against Spurs, and Pat Jennings was in goal. It was the only time I’ve ever wanted Spurs to get beaten, because I’d played in the same team as Phillips and I was just willing him to score.
Those were ‘standing’ days at White Hart Lane, and the atmosphere was electric. I used to stand behind the Park Lane goal and the visiting fans used to stand among us, but there was rarely any trouble. I remember the old programmes, with the team set out in formation order on the back. Roger, ever the entrepreneur, would cut them all out, take the tiny pieces of paper and shake them up in his hand and sell them to blokes in the crowd. You’d pick one for a penny and the first goal scorer would win the pot. It was absolutely brilliant, and, although it was for a tiny amount of money, it would really increase the tension, as you willed on the left back to score an unlikely opening goal to win you the pot.
Spurs were a great team to watch in those days and very much a passing team. The game was of course slower, and the pitch probably wasn’t the best either, but Cliff Jones was so fast. Those were the days of Beal, Brown, Gilzean and Greaves, and I was quickly becoming a huge Spurs fan, but primarily a football fan.
Then Roger bought a television and we started watching the televised matches. During cup finals, I’d write the names of the teams on paper and stick them on to the TV set. As they scored, I’d put the scores up on the telly. It took years for the BBC to make my job as scorekeeper redundant, by putting the scores up on the screen themselves.
I was equally obsessed with my autograph book: you could read every single autograph, as the handwriting in those days was good and old-fashioned. Those albums were outstanding; I used to buy magazines and newspapers and pictures from the Spurs shop, and I would stick them in those books, all in perfect order, and all of them signed. I was fanatical about the players being in order and everything laid out ‘just so’.
Around this time, Roger and I got into Subbuteo. I quickly became obsessed with it, and soon I had 54 teams. My first was Motherwell, because I was taken by their red and yellow stripes. I had the floodlights, the stadium, the crowd, the works – Roger and my sister really spoiled me. I had league tables, held FA Cup competitions and had books and books of scores from the myriad games that Roger and I would play against each other. It was a miracle my sister didn’t ask for a divorce, the amount of time Roger spent with me and not her! It was safe to say they looked after me like a son.
I wish I still had those Subbuteo results books today.
On a Sunday, Roger and my sister would come to my mum’s house for lunch, and afterwards we would disappear upstairs to play Subbuteo, from seven o’clock to eleven o’clock at night. Everything was regimented and perfectly laid out, including my growing autograph collection. I must have had eight albums in all, all fully signed: amounting to a whole childhood’s work. But one day, when I turned 16, I gave them away to the lad next door. He was only ten, and we used to play head tennis over the fence. He said one day, ‘I really like Spurs, they’re my team.’ So I went back in the house, picked up the books and handed them over the fence. The lot. It was the end of a chapter for me, and reluctantly, with my football dreams over, I went to work with my dad at the firm he worked for, Beautility Furniture.
Dad had been working there 25 years when suddenly he fell ill. And very sadly, he passed away soon afterwards. I carried on working for the firm, but it was such a vast company that even months after he’d passed I’d see someone I hadn’t seen for a few months