Spurs: A knowing looks. Match day faces at the Lane

Words: Tim Bechervaise

Images: Tim Bechervaise

The buzz of pre-match is one of life’s small joys.

I’ve been going to White Hart Lane for years, and whatever state our club is in – be it the heady days under Poch or the more grim times of late – the journey to the ground has never failed to whet my appetite for a game.

It begins on the train where it’s never long before I see the odd fellow Spurs fan and we share a knowing look or nod. The trickle soon turns into a crowd, and soon I am among the throng walking the High Road to the stadium.

It’s here where supporters meet outside the Beaverton Corner Pin to go in for a pint or two, take selfies in front of front of the majestic stadium, emerge from the shop replete with the latest kit, queue outside the fabled Chick King, protest the ownership, read the programme…

It’s a scene I am well familiar with, but one I will never tire of, because it prompts that same addictive feeling: hope.

©Tim Bechervaise/ Terrace Edition. Tottenham Hotspur FC.

Whether it’s hope that the good run will continue, or Son will finally break his drought, or this will actually be our year, or we’ll finally turn up and play attacking, front-foot football – there is always something that puts a spring in my step.

Many Spurs fan will here tell you that “It’s the hope that kills you.” I totally get that – I’ve said it a million times to people over the years! – such is Tottenham’s propensity to clutch defeat from the jaws of victory. Spursy, you could say.

But I don’t think I’d be so quick to say that now, having gone to more games over the past year than I ever have done, taking with me my Fujifilm x100f to take shots.

It’s odd looking back on these photos with the benefit of hindsight. Pictures of the North London Derby, which Spurs won 3-0 to steal a march on Arsenal for fourth place, are filled with unbridled fervour and joy, whilst images from the first game of the 2022-23 season against Southampton, which Spurs won 4-1, carry an early season optimism that looked like it might just hold out.

But less than a year on, the situation at Tottenham (and Arsenal!) couldn’t look more different. In many ways, I can’t look at these photos without an ache in my heart, knowing what the wild optimism around the games has given way to. But then I look at them another way, which is the reminder of the many small joys those matchdays (for the most part!) gave me at the time.

And not only that time – but that evening, that weekend, that week, that month even. Seeing our team win makes it bearable to watch Match of the Day, whilst many other of life’s mundanities is given an added bounce to them. And if life in general happens to be tough, those wins can feeling even bouncier. That’s what football can do to you. It can ruin a weekend, but boy can it make one.

Much is made of trophies and legacies in football – and for good reason. But sometimes not enough is made of what one goal, one win, one moment can do for us at the time, irrespective of what is to come.

As Mother Teresa once said, “Yesterday is gone, tomorrow has not yet come. We have only today, let us begin.”