Today I'm going back 37 years to 1985 and Tottenham's nearly end of season game against Watford at White Hart Lane attended by 23,167 spectators.
The cover stars from today's programme are Tottenham's Argentine World Cup winner Osvaldo (Ossie) Ardiles and Ipswich Town's Romeo Zondervan pictured in action from the game played three weeks earlier. The signing of Ardiles by Tottenham in 1978 following that World Cup in Argentina wasn't the first example of an overseas player joining an English club but I would argue that when Ardiles and his compatriot Ricardo Villa joined Spurs we were witnessing the dawn of a new age in English football. The trickle of foreign talent became a flood as the cash-laden ,Premier League became regarded as THE best league in the world. Whether it is the best is arguable but it is surely the richest. Romeo Zondervan, a Dutch midfielder signed for Ipswich in 1984 from that bastion of Europe, West Bromwich Albion. He was a full Dutch international although he earned just a single cap in 1981 against Cyprus. Zondervan, a qualified pilot, was nicknamed "the porno king" by The Sun newspaper following an incident in which a friend of his was found to be carrying pornographic material on a flight from the Netherlands. If that's the definition of a "porno king" then I think that there are millions more kings out there!
The teleprinter used by the BBC on Grandstand and their Final Score programme was always a thing of fascination for me. Sadly, I didn't get to see it in operation too often as I was usually coming home from a match when it was being shown in its Saturday teatime slot on the BBC. Originally the television camera would be pointed at a big mechanical printer (like a large typewriter) printing onto paper a bit like a telex machine (if you're old enough to remember those) but this was eventually replaced by a "vidiprinter" which was more modern. Apparently when the change was made, viewers complained about the lack of noise from the new vidiprinter and, after a couple of weeks, the BBC dubbed in a chattering sound to satisfy the disgruntled viewers. One of the delightful things about the printer was that there was the occasional mistake such as one occasion when a result was misreported as being 11-0 and was then quietly corrected to 1-0 later. In order to assist belief, the printer would print the number of goals in letters if the score line was extraordinary so it would say something like "8 (EIGHT) 0". Today's featured game is certainly one that would have merited such treatment as it finished Tottenham 1 Watford 5 (FIVE)!
It wasn't quite the end of the season but you do have to wonder, looking at the score line, whether some of the Tottenham players' minds were already on the beach. The featured match was effectively over before half time with Spurs already three goals down as Watford ran riot. I've seen Spurs suffer one or two heavy defeats over the years but this one, coming as it did against Watford, was embarrassing. Watford's goals came from Nigel Callaghan, Luther Blissett (penalty), John Barnes, a Danny Thomas own goal and Colin West with Tottenham's meagre consolation coming via the penalty spot from Glenn Hoddle.
Peter Shreeves had replaced Keith Burkinshaw as Tottenham's manager the previous summer and he did a solid job as Spurs finished the season in third place in the First Division, level on points with runners-up Liverpool but thirteen points behind Champions Everton. Had Spurs made a better showing at White Hart Lane then they could have mounted a proper challenge for the title. They lost eleven times during the League season of which seven defeats (including the featured game) came at home. Watford, managed by Graham Taylor, ended up just in the top half of the table in a respectable eleventh place. Norwich City, Sunderland and Stoke City were the teams relegated that season.
CRB Match No. 377
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