Finbar O'Neill
Spur
FOR the first time in my life, I’m speechless. The last three weeks have been a complete blur. You wish, and wait, and hope. Last Wednesday night you’d swear we’d just won the bloody Champions League. It was a wonderful performance – all credit to team and manager.
I’ll never be unfaithful again ’Arry, promise. To take City down like that will be remembered for a long time. Style, that’s what it’s all about. Substance cannot be bought and sold. Stage-managed beautifully into submission by Sky (who’d do a good job making a West Mayo Junior B League game sound sexy), it was a shootout for the ages. We gathered early, nervous, and, when we saw the team, hopeful that we could manage the draw that would give us the best chance we’ve ever had of reaching our Holy Grail.
Hugh Mc Ilvanney, a sports writer of great acclaim (and a Spurs fan) called it right in the Sunday Times. No little skill was needed, add to that plenty of ‘cojones’. Imperious at the back and bright going forward, we sent the camel jockeys home praying for salvation. Crouch, much maligned this year by me and others, was outstanding. King and Dawson gave their bog standard ‘the way is shut’ performance. Bale and Modric were irrepressible again.
It was beautiful to watch for the neutral, nightmarish for the Spurs fan. But when that whistle blew for full time it was pure, unadulterated joy. We’ve waited 48 years for another course at Europe’s top table and it has finally arrived. And how Spurs deserve it. Amazing stuff.
Somehow, it seemed as if it would all come down to the City game. All teams looking for fourth were so tightly bunched all season that it was always going to the wire. Spurs, however, went and won the prize themselves. When you beat the Goons and Chelsea in successive matches so late in the season you can’t help but think ‘it has to be our year’. These were impressive performances, born out of a hunger and desire to not let the manager or the fans down, again.
The blip against Manchester United, a game we should (and could) have got something out of, will be forgotten primarily because in the end we enjoyed a three-point cushion over fifth place. On Sunday against Burnley we showed that our focus can wane. That the appetite for glory is not fully bedded in. Hell, I’m not fussed, the fixture didn’t really matter, Arsenal were never going to lose and let us slip into third. I’ll give my left one if we are within three points of them prior to the last game every year though.
So, true to predictions, it is Chelsea’s title. Well deserved in the end. They have been superior for most of the season. Some will bemoan the fact that the league was so open. Hello? What numbskull wants one team to run away and triumph every year? It’s bad for the game. What’s good for the game is showing that there is life beyond the establishment, that the ‘Big Four’ can be broken. If you separate the weak, (sorry, ’Pool fans), you can enjoy the bounty.
So, we look forward to the World Cup safe in the knowledge that we have two ties in late August which give us a real shot at the big time. Having worked so hard to get there, I would be astounded if we don’t manage it. However, when you look at the teams that made the group stages last year against big teams and all the odds, it gives you heart. I know I have a heart as it almost jumped clear out of my chest at 10pm on Wednesday, May 5, 2010. Glory, Glory, Tottenham Hotspur.
