COCK-A-DARE-TO-DOOOOO!!!

Welcome! My door is now open and you are free to step into my abode. Come in, sit down and take the weight off of your feet. Mi casa, su casa. Here you are more than just another guest, you may treat this as a new home and you are not just invited to speak your mind, but encouraged to. Consider this as a commune, a retreat for like-minded, free-spirited souls who have become tired of trying to conform, bored of pretense and fed up with the world as it is accepted. Within these walls we will challenge the natural order of things, take on the established perceptions and generally be a bit different. Just one thing: it will help if you support Spurs!

. . . and not simply because this is a Spurs blog either. By the very fact that you are a Spurs fan it shows that you are naturally “a bit different”. Of the “big” English clubs, we are the wild card, the one who is abstract and a little bizarre. As a club we have always gone about our business in an imprecise, irregular manner whilst maintaining a strangely hypnotic beauty not just in the way we play, but in everything we do. I'm hoping, therefore, that we'll be open to a new approach. A Cocky approach, it should be right up our street.

As fans of this football club we show an immediate intellectual superiority over the average thug. Intelligence often manifests itself as eccentricity - and we have that in spades. Whether supporting Spurs is something that has been handed down to you through the generations or whether it is something you have been inflicted with more recently, you will cherish it because it goes way beyond plain old emotion. We pride ourselves on not having fallen into the trap of following one the traditional, commercialised “big 4” and yet still being able to demand a modicum of success and, most importantly, that our team plays with panache. We do not simply ask that they be capable of entertainment, we obligate them to providing it each and every game, win or lose. Tottenham’s great captain of yesteryear, Danny Blanchflower, once famously said:

“Football is about glory, it is about doing things in style and with a flourish, about going out and beating the lot, not waiting for them to die of boredom.”

Well, whilst every Spurs fan would undoubtedly agree whole-heartedly with Mr. Blanchflower, we would generally settle for just “doing things in style and with a flourish” whether we are “going out and beating the other lot” or not. That is where we separate ourselves from the uni-browed pack of Neanderthals that tag onto other clubs. They call themselves “Football Fans” but they are not fans of football. WE are. They swarm after their team craving that fix they get from seeing them win but we, on the other hand, seek that fix in every aspect of the game, the end result being a mere crescendo. We extract it from every niche and we evaluate every nuance, and we thrive on it. A splendid pass, a crushing tackle, a well-executed offside trap, a miraculous save . . . they are all appreciated by spurs fans not simply as added extras but virtually on par with the final score.

We really do have an unbridled passion for the game of football and it gushes from us and forces us to push boundaries. We cannot mundanely go out and kick a ball around for 90 minutes, we HAVE to express ourselves and that has always given us a creative edge. We have never in our history adhered to the common consensus of English “hoofball” and have never sought to play it. Instead we formulate our own way, forming a “push and run” style which has become so lauded in the Barcelona team of today. Thing is, we did it long before any of that wonderful Catalan team were even born. They claim that their inspiration is born of the philosophy of Barcelona and Dutch legend Johan Cruyff, whose Ajax and Holland side of the 1970’s played their own brand of “total football”. We did it before even they were born!! In fact, Arthur Rowe’s title-winning Tottenham team of the early 1950’s are credited with the conception of “push and run” but really it was just the way Spurs had always tried to play, Rowe simply refined it and transformed it from a simple ideal into a functional and successful method which could be applied on the pitch.

Throughout our existence Spurs have always taken great pleasure from playing, and I mean “play” in it’s most literal sense. We really love the game. The club has always had a Joie de Vivre and it has left an imprint not just on our own history, but that of English and even European football. The first, and still the only non-league team to win the FA Cup; The first team of the 20th Century to win the domestic double; The first English team to win a UEFA competition; The first team to win the UEFA Cup. Our history is football’s history. As most Spurs fans will know, when we won our first FA Cup way back in 1901 we were so proud of our team and their achievement that we wanted to mark it in some way. Imaginatively we decided to tie ribbons in our colours to the trophy in order to celebrate our success and that gesture was so evocative and encapsulated that moment so accurately that to this day it is replicated by the FA’s champions and has become a tradition that symbolises everything the FA Cup is about.

We might be a poor, dilapidated borough of North London but our influence has stretched the world over. For example, could two South Americans of typical, Latino flamboyance arrive at any other club in England toward the end of the drab 1970s and not only fit in, but fall in love with the place? Ossie & Ricky came from Argentina, as World Cup winners, from ticker-tape strewn arenas to muddy cess-pits, to a country they were at war with, and yet they stayed, they played and they grew an affection toward Tottenham Hotspur which remains with them still and, no doubt, for the rest of their lives. We live in a world of opposites, I suppose, of Ying and Yang. In that sense, is it any wonder that a place as grey and as grotty as Tottenham should spawn something as magnificent as Tottenham Hotspur?

Now, all this self-indulgence will, without question, feel uncomfortable to the majority of Spurs fans. It's in our nature to be cynical and we seem to love a good moan almost as much as we love a good game of football. Well, as I said at the very beginning, this blog is all about being different and us Spurs fans should therefore embrace the concept. Why not? For once let’s just revel in our greatness. There will always be negatives, of course, but there are plenty of other blogs and forums around to go and have a whinge. This house has just one rule and that is “positivity”. Actually, we’ll push it right to the very edge of positivity and over the side into a sea of obnoxious bravado . We’ll put the “Cock” in “cockyness”. We won’t care a jot if we upset fans of other clubs, what are they doing here anyway?

So come on. Stick your nose in the air & puff out your chest and join me in a strut that is worthy of the Cocks we all are!

After all, I’d much rather be a Cock than an Arse.