Undercover Gooner
It’s not very often I get opportunities to do the whole ‘corporate hospitality’ thing. So when work got offered a night out in the Executive Suite at Spurs by our lawyers for the North London Derby I jumped at the chance. Woo, and indeed ha.
I clocked off early to make the epic journey to N17 (we might complain about getting home from the Arsenal, but you have to pity those who have to schlep to WHL every week – their journey is epic and you end up arriving in the Crimea), and as I got closer to Spurs territory I realised that I was the only person left on the train who didn't look like an Orc. I felt like Viggo f***ing Mortenson in Lord of the Rings.
On arrival at ‘The Oak Room’, a thoroughly nice lady showed me to my table. I was the first one there from my party so sat down to delve through my Spurs’ goody bag (complimentary programme and a Spurs-branded chequebook holder. That’ll come in handy when I go back to 1988) as Ken Friar walked past me followed shortly afterwards by David Dein. The two did not talk and seemed to be avoiding each other, so read into that what you will…
In fairness to the enemy, they put on a decent show. Champagne and canapé reception as a specially recorded video of ‘arry and a bunch of Spurs players welcoming you to WHL played in the background, followed by highlights of their Club’s apparently ‘glorious’ history. Most of it in black & white.
Dinner was a salmon terrine followed by a nice cut of sirloin steak and a cracking bit of pudding, all accompanied by free bevvies. Absolutely no complaints from your correspondent in red tie (as was my boss, also a Gooner) at this stage… until we had to make our way to our seats. Spurs have three executive boxes by the looks of it, and they were on the opposite side of the ground, so we made our way along a couple of carpeted, oak panelled corridors before finding ourselves in a fire escape, and then in the West Upper concourse where we were surrounded by skinheads
Our seats were decent, halfway up the West Upper and next to the travelling Gooners (safety in numbers), although I nearly did for myself when Theo opened the scoring and I couldn’t help but do a fist bump. There was a 24 stone Spud in front of me who caught me celebrating and I very quickly turned my joy into a suppressed yawn. No Oscar nomination for me, but dear GOD, I deserved one!
The less said about the game the better, but having to stand up and politely applaud when Spurs scored on three separate occasions was as humiliating an experience as I can remember.
The final whistle blew, and although I thought I has just seen a 3-3 draw, it turned out I had seen Spurs win the League, the Ryder Cup, the General Election and the X-Factor in one go judging by their celebrations. My fellow Gooners and I were then invited to ‘f*** off back to Woolwich’ because ‘North London is [theirs]’. Quite.
We made it back to our suite where there was thankfully more free booze, and I could at least whinge about the game with the other Gooners in our party, including my boss who put a fiver on 3-3 in the hope of jinxing the result and who was now ruing the £70 he now had to take home and which he would have swapped a hundred times over for three points.
Then, there was a nice touch. Rafael van der Vaart appeared and did a 15-minute Q&A and walk-around with the 50 or so people in our suite and was presented with his MotM award by a fan before posing for photos. When asked what was going through his mind when he stepped up to take the equalising penalty he answered “I was s***ting my pants”. Fair play to him! Can you imagine Lord Wenger allowing his precious babies an opportunity to interact with the scumbag proletariat who keep him and his perennial underachievers in iced Evian?
