They Call it Football

You could say that this weekend was a ‘Football Weekend’.
As you may recall last year, my housemate, Paul and myself volunteered to assist with the distribution of Tottenham flags in the Wembley Stadium. Well, we did it again this year because neither of us had tickets to go to Sunday’s League Cup Final between Tottenham and Manchester United. It was going to be the closest that we would get to the game, so why not? It was a good day out with a free lunch in the Wembley staff canteen and we both scored one of the flags. We were happy, so after this we headed off to Leicester square to meet up with some friends who were out and about in central London. Oh, and if you’ve ever wondered how they do the grass patterns on the pitches have a look at the above pic.

A while later in a bar playing pool I got a phone call from one of the folks from the group of us at Wembley. He just wanted to get my permission to forward my phone number to Anna, who is the marketing manager at Tottenham that had organised the flags. Not a problem, and no, if you’re thinking that it was because of some sort of ‘chemistry’ between Anna and myself, you’d be wrong. She rang shortly after to inform me that as a thank you for Paul and me, they had arranged tickets to the Cup Final for us.
It’s not what you know...
To say we were well chuffed would be an understatement. It certainly improved our mood for the rest of the evening, which was about to improve yet again.

We ended up in a pub just off Bishopsgate, and while chatting with some scots that had come down for the cup final, I saw May-Lis walk past outside. I ducked outside to say hello, and she informed me that she was about to meet up with Petter at a Steve Perryman night. Five minutes after parting ways, I got a call from Petter saying that he could get both Paul and myself in to the event.
You may recall that I met Steve Perryman briefly at a book signing just before xmas. To recap: he played for Tottenham from 1967 through to 1986, playing nearly 1,000 matches and captaining the side to 5 of the 6 major trophies won by the Spurs during his time.
The event itself was pretty much a buffet dinner, with Steve as a guest speaker, and included both a signing/photo session as well as some question and answer time. A good night all up really. He was a good speaker, interesting and was not boring at any stage. He happily obliged with photos and signing before the night was over.
Certainly a good way to spend the eve of a cup final!

Sunday was a fairly slow, but a somewhat early start as we met quite a few folk at a pub in Whitehall for breakfast, and the fun started from there. Eventually, we left to head towards Wembley at around midday. A fun trip on the tube and train as we encountered a group of Manchester fans along the way - it did get rather rowdy and made for an entertaining trip up to the stadium, before we headed up Olympic Way to the stadium (left). Such a great buzz in the masses of folks heading there - the food stalls, souvenir stands, street vendors and fans of all sorts. There’s no match like a Cup final.
The match itself was a bit of a rollercoaster on the emotions as both teams had their chances to win it, but unfortunately it eventually came down to the dreaded penalty shootout to separate the two teams. Spurs day it was not - even wearing Dig’s Spurs pin didn’t seem to help...
No empty seat next to me this year for the old boy, but not to worry, the guy who was sitting next to me was good fun as we chatted, cheered, jeered and sang away for over the two hours of game time.
Once over, Paul and I regrouped to head into Wembley Central for a (very good) curry while the crowds filling up the tube station thinned out...