It starts with a confession. It always has to when I meet someone new, as if I can see the day the truth will rise up and bury me. I understand that, its the price I have to pay for changing my football team.
I know it would be easier for most to bear if I had left my wife and children rather than my football team. People just don't do the latter, not real fans, its the last taboo of football (especially now we realise that colour, gender and sexuality doesn't affect your ability to kick a leather ball.)
So let me start at the start.
My granddad was a Tottenham fan, not a season ticket holder and in truth more of a cricket man. My father at the rebellious age of eight or so moved his allegiance, which is okay, he was a child, making his own choice, even if that choice was Chelsea. He fled into the arms of Osgood, Tambling and Chopper Harris and has stayed there ever since.
He became a father and so I was taken on many an occasion in the mid-eighties to the Bridge to see Dixon, Nevin and Spackman and I enjoyed it, I did, even the poor games and there were many of those.. But life changes.
It was 1986 and I was already in love by that devastating day at Wembley the following year, with the club initially but eternally so with Chris Waddle. Yes Hoddle played like a God, Clive Allen couldn't stop scoring and Gary Mabbutt was, well he was Gary Mabbutt but Waddle was beyond God and was capable of producing miracles far exceeding his. Even when Gazza joined nothing could knock Waddle off his pedestal. Perhaps I loved him too much, and I can say that in possession of pictures of a mulleted child who bears an undeniable resemblance to myself. He was one of two childhood heroes, the other Luke Skywalker also left this father on the dark side. But when Waddle left in 1989 so did my heart. It travelled to Marseille with him but such a long-distance relationship was always doomed. England increasingly took over as my football outlet. I can't even remember a particular day when a decision was made to leave Spurs, I just drifted out of club football.
My father and a fifteen year old me decided early one Saturday morning in August 1994 that we would go and watch one of our local teams Aylesbury United play in the first round preliminaries of the FA Cup. The aim was to follow the trail through the backwaters of football, the grounds with parking at the side of the pitch and ferry trips to the Isle of Wight until we reached the twin towers of Wembley. The true romance of the FA Cup which is where I fell in love again. My father and I travelled to a league match at Selhurst Park to get tickets for Crystal Palace vs Manchester United in the semi final and it was watching the Eagles that I found my teenage football self.
At university in Yorkshire I would travel to Palace's away games at Bramall Lane, Hillsborough and Oakwell throwing myself into the animated away support. There were rare ups but mostly it was adversity, which perhaps is what I craved from my football at that time.
But times change and in 2010 for the second time in six years Crystal Palace were in administration and on the verge of total collapse. My personal life had altered dramatically now, we had bought a house, weeks before the market fell away and had two small children to provide for. With this, combined with a fourteen hour work and commute, football should have been my outlet, my escape, but it wasn't, it only brought more grief. The football itself was restricted to two minutes of Championship highlights a week and an occasional paragraph in the paper. The opportunity to go to games had been extinguished.
I needed to be selfish with my outlet. I wanted to be excited about a transfer window, about the build-up to a match, about watching the game itself. I found myself watching Spurs again behind Palace's back. What misery was I bestowing on my son and daughter, to teach them that football was only about struggle, they needed to know the beauty, to see the Waddles, Hoddles and Gazzas not worrying whether you are going to be able to stop your best player moving to sit on the bench for Stoke.
On the 1st June 2010 Crystal Palace had their day in court. This was to be the day that the club were liquidated. Friends asked what I was going to do and I told them that i wasn't sure, that it was too raw, but I was, I had decided I was going to return to Spurs. It was like a loved one passing away after a long illness, it was incredibly sad but it would have been naiive not to have thought about life in their wake.
Later that day the announcement was made that the club had been saved by its supporters. My brother, also a Palace fan, texted me emotionally with the news. I should have been elated but I wasn't. I knew then, if I couldn't be happy with this news then I would never be happy there again and like with any relationship that cannot be rescued it was time to move on.
We don't expect to have the same partner from the playground until we die so why is there such a stigma against changing teams? Does it not make sense that a team can be the perfect fit for you at some stages of your life and a complete mismatch at others? Much like our relationships with lovers, friends, bands, brands; we develop and evolve as we grow and therefore our tastes change.
Football has become something to look forward to for me, through the various TV and streaming options I can if I want watch every game. When the time comes for us to win a cup or even perhaps the league I will of course celebrate and those that have supported Spurs all their life need not fear, it will not tarnish any of their joy. Did long-suffering City supporters feel empty at Aguero's last minute winner with all their new found fans? I doubt it. As with anything in life, work, love or football the more you invest the more you will receive. A fan who watches every match invests more than an occasional fan who checks the results and therefore their reward will be greater,
Football fans should not be afraid of those who use the game as an outlet for their life, or those who change every season for the latest champions, or for those for whom it exists only on FIFA or Match Attax cards. In the words of the late Lou Reed 'You're going to reap just what you sow.' Football has a large heart and there is room enough for everyone.
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