Review Books: Down Memory Lane. By Harry Harris. Green Umbrella Publishing | Tottenham Hotsour | Gary Lineker | Glory | White Hart Lane

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Published: 26 February 2009

Harry Harris with former Tottenham striker Gary Lineker

Harry’s White Hart (memory) Lane

OH, Spurs are on their way to Wembley... and although Harry Redknapp’s charges are the underdogs for this Sunday’s League Cup Final against Manchester United, it has not always been the case.
The glory glory years of Tottenham Hotspur are celebrated in a misty-eyed look back over 50 years of following the Lilywhites, by seasoned football reporter Harry Harris.
Harris has written 60 books – including many ghosted biographies of famous footballers – but felt it was time now to write his own story. “The Nick Hornby book Fever Pitch [about an Arsenal supporter] introduced people to football writing,” he says. “I wanted to do something similar.”
The result is more than just a potted history of life at the Lane. Instead he tried to define what the draw of the club was to people of his age – children of the 1940s and 50s.
“It is about answering the question of why kids in the East End gravitated to the north for their football,” he says. “I suppose the logical place to watch football for a Stepney boy like me would be West Ham. But the excitement generated by the Double-winning side, and the push-and-run team 10 years previously, meant the support from the places I grew up in was always good.”
In the 1960s Harry went to work for the Tottenham Herald – a newspaper that boasted strong links with the club. He became friendly with players and the board, advising chairmen Irving Scholar and Sir Alan Sugar, and helped the club source players such as the Geordie duo Chris Waddle and Paul Gascoigne. His book covers the backroom machinations of a series of Spurs sides, and gives him a unique vantage point to consider why a club with so much history and wealth should be struggling.
He says it is because of a lack of patience with managers. “Bill Nicholson was in charge for 16 years,” he says. “He wanted to set up a dynasty, but it never happened. And that has been the story ever since – managers not being given the time they need to bed in and build.”
The book also includes golden memories. “I used to queue at the boys’ entrance. I got there very early. In the next hour or two it would get more and more packed, and your vantage point would get squeezed. I remember standing at the back of a stand hanging on to a pipe. All I could see was one of the goalmouths.”
His first game was to see the reserves play Brighton. “I was on holiday with my mum,” he recalls. Harry was eight – and Spurs scored eight times. “We had a good team out – Bobby Smith, Tony Marchi and Terry Dyson were coming back from injury or looking for match practice.
“They were great players and cemented my lifelong love of the club.”
DAN CARRIER

• Down Memory Lane. By Harry Harris. Green Umbrella Publishing £18.99

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