People who don’t know me very well might wonder why a person like me would support a team like Tottenham Hotspur.
I wasn’t born in North London. I have no attachment to the Tottenham area. I don’t even have any relatives who support Spurs. In fact, most of my family and friends are barely aware that the English Premier League exists.
And I have to admit that up until the very recent past, I was no different. Like many young Canberrans, I was raised on a diet of rugby union and cricket.
Other sports existed, but only in the background. While I indulged myself in picking teams in other competitions, I rarely exalted in their fortunes or lost any sleep when they struggled.
They were just my teams on paper. And Tottenham Hotspur was one of them.
That changed in this calendar year thanks to a friend who bleeds Red. I wasn’t watching Spurs, so he dragged me off to watch Liverpool play a few games instead.
It didn’t take long for me to see that the intensity of the competition defied my preconceptions about soccer.
Contentious penalties, ninetieth minute goals, and personalities so vibrant and so arrogant that you could not help but feel drawn into the drama.
This Premier League is powerful stuff.
So this year, I started to watch Spurs.
Why Spurs? It would have been very easy to quietly defect to a bigger club now that I’d decided to take the EPL seriously.
Tottenham are a mid-table club. They might challenge the leading quartet more often than the bottom four, but they have played barely any Champions League, and haven’t finished above arch-rivals Arsenal since 1994-1995.
They also have no premierships to speak of.
So the question I sometimes ask myself is why didn’t I choose to support a club with a glorious history like Manchester United or Liverpool FC?
Why not support a wealthy club that would never want for quality players like Manchester City or Chelsea?
Why not support the artisans of attractive football and foreign (French) connections to which I can relate in the now-loathed Arsenal?
I think it really boiled down to a few justifications.
Firstly, there is the fact that they are an underdog club.
With very few exceptions, I detest teams that win too much.
Too often they can attract the kind of fans that lack humility, that lack grit, and that lack the kind of grace that people only get by having beaten into them. They gravitate towards success because they have no character to deal with defeat.
I didn’t want to be one of them. More than that, I wanted to prove to myself that I was not one of them.
That might sound a little precious and self-absorbed, but for me it was a question of authenticity.
I could never take my support for an adopted team seriously if I ever had that nagging doubt that I had only started supporting them because they were successful.
So Tottenham! There’s no bandwagon there. And should ever they rise from their mediocre returns, you can bet I will be there to relish it.
In the meantime, I don’t mind sucking it up to the disappointing losses, the changes in personnel, or the mid-table finishes.
There is, however, one thing I will not tolerate, and that is an overly-cautious approach that betrays the aggressive principles of the club and besmirches the name of Harry Hotspur.
That was the thing that made Tottenham stand out, you see, when I was going through names on a table to decide who to ‘support’ back in 2005.
Tottenham Hotspur – named in honour of one of the boldest, most aggressive English warriors of recorded history – shone like a beacon.
Those who care for literature know that like his namesake Football Club, the historical Hotspur’s success and ambition was checked by more powerful rivals of the establishment.
He went down in a fight to the death with his rivals in an honourable defeat.
Though he fell short, he is still admired for his fearlessness and his sheer audacity, and that’s what I expect when I hear the name ‘Hotspur’.
I might be new to Premier League football, but in my opinion, Spurs have let me down in the start to this season.
It’s not about the results. People pointing out the reasonable possibility of a top-four finish are missing the point.
For me, results are secondary to fulfilment. Spurs have a name to live up to and I want to see that in the field.
I want to see aggression and fearlessness. I want to see audacity. They may be less talented, but there is no excuse for spinelessness.
Forget about the ghost of Villas-Boas and embrace the spirit of Harry Hotspur, lads. Be brave and worry about the mathematics never. That’s all I want to see.
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