The North’s domination of the professional game had been broken with the Cup win in 1901 and a lot of people in the game expected the great side that John Cameron had assembled to go from strength to strength but it was not to be. The rise to prominence had been swift and surprising and the decline that followed was just as unexpected. There were no real successes in the years after that cup win and nothing of any great note for the football aficionados of the South to hang on to.

Cameron’s side had won the Southern League in 1900 and the cup in 1901 but the era ended with the departure of talisman forward Sandy Brown. The defence of the cup in 1901/02 ended (as so often happens) with a defeat at the hands of the other Southern side that had gained some success in the Cup, Southampton. The Saints were the first Southern professionals to reach a final having managed that a year before Spurs only to be beaten 4-0 by Bury. It took them three attempts before they finally knocked Spurs out with the second replay being played out in a heavy snowstorm with the Saints winning 2-1. One small consolation for Spurs was to see Southampton again reach the final but again they lost, this time to Sheffield United who won the cup 2-1 in a replay after the first game ended 1-1. Four quarter finals followed for Spurs but that was as far as they were to get in the cup until after the First World War.

In 1904 Spurs made the headlines in the cup for the wrong reasons. After beating Everton away in the first round we were drawn at home to Aston Villa. The crowd for this game was larger than expected and Spurs installed extra bench seating around the pitch. However Villa scored in the first half and the Spurs fans invaded the pitch. The game could not continue and was abandoned by the referee Jack Howcroft. Spurs were fined £350 and the game was ordered to be replayed at Villa Park a week later. Spurs winning 1-0, only to be knocked out by The Wednesday in the next round.

Although a fine of £350 was seen as a fairly heavy penalty, it was no real problem for Spurs at the time who were making a profit every year. Something that could not be said of many a side of that era. A number of clubs were in financial difficulties but Spurs had a good board of directors runnig the club and its finances very well. In fact after joining the League they made a profit of over £22,000 in their first six years as a League club, a sum unheard of in its day.

However, if Spurs wanted to continue to grow and to compete with the elite clubs of the Midlands and the North they needed to join the Football League. The Southern League had become very conservative and was seen by the board as being a barrier to future success. In 1905 Chelsea – a club formed as a ‘for profit’ professional side and in 1906 Clapton Orient, had applied for membership of the Southern League and had been refused so instead they joined the more lucrative Football League which was looking at the time to harness the potentially large crowds of the capital. 1906 & 1907 saw Fulham win the Southern league and then resign to join the Football League so it was only a matter of time before Spurs (and the other London clubs) would have to join them.

Crowds in the Southern League were falling as the attraction of seeing the big League sides was attracting supporters to the London sides already in the League to the detriment of Spurs. Tottenham had even instigated a Baseball League at White Hart Lane in order to bring in extra revenue. This was unsuccessful and things came to a head, and in 1908 both Spurs and QPR resigned from the Southern League. A  somewhat risky strategy as neither club had anywhere to play the following season.

 QPR changed their mind and asked to be re-admitted to the Southern League and were allowed to but only after they agreed to play all their home matches midweek as a penalty. Spurs on the other hand applied for membership of the Football League and it went to a vote at the AGM. Votes were cast as follows; Grimsby 32, Chesterfield 23, Bradford Park Avenue 20, Lincoln 18 and Spurs 14 and Burton Albion 1. So it was that Spurs were rejected and with the season fast approaching we had no fixtures other than cups and friendlies to look forward to. Salvation came in the form of Stoke who had been relegated to Division 2 of the Football League and had struggled financially with the falling gate receipts. Because of this Stoke resigned from the League in June. Stokes’ Chairman told Charles Roberts, our Chairman and a deal was stuck whereby Stoke would support Spurs bid to join the League. They changed their minds however and decided to stand themselves for the vacant place they themselves had left. And so Stoke, Spurs and Lincoln City applied for the vacant place and the voting was tight. Lincoln had been one of the founding members of the Second Division in 1892 but hard times had forced them out to be replaced by Bradford PA. Geographically they were closer to the other sides in the division and that was seen as being in their favour and the voting for the vacant spot was tied twice between Spurs and Lincoln. Eventually the League Management committee voted on it and the fact that Spurs were recent cup winners swung the result in their favour by 5 votes to 3.

So Spurs were a League club and as was the tradition before the First World War, the first game of the season was played on September the 1^st – a Tuesday afternoon in 1908. However this did not stop twenty thousand fans turning up at the Lane up to see Spurs play the Cup holders (and the first Second Division cup holders at that) Wolverhampton Wanderers. Six minutes into the game Vivian  Woodward scored our first ever league goal and we went on to win 3-0 with a team that contained only one player, Tom Morris, from the 1901 cup side. The full team that day was Hewitson, Coquet, Burton, Morris, Dan Steel, Darnell, Walton, Woodward, Macfarlane, Bob Steel and Middlemiss.  One thing more to note about Woodward was that he was not just a player; he was also a director of the club. How many Player Directors are there these days? A fine player, he was Englands leading goalscorer, netting 29 goals in 23 full internationals – a feat not bettered until Tom Finney came along.

That first league season saw us unbeaten at home until March and coming to the end of the season three teams were in the running and level at the top. Spurs, Bolton and West Brom and all three had to play Derby County. West Brom lost first then Spurs drew 1-1 and finally Bolton beat Derby. This meant that Spurs won promotion on goal average at the first attempt by finishing 2^nd ahead of West Brom with Bolton winning the division. Has Spurs drawn that game with Derby 2-2, under the goal average system it would have been West Brom that pipped Spurs.

So into the League and promoted at the first attempt – such is the way of things at Spurs and off the pitch things were changing rapidly as well. A new West Stand had been built (the one the current West Stand replaced) and on its roof was placed a cockerel and ball cast in bronze by an ex player. The club undertook its first overseas tour, to Argentina where on the way back we inherited the parrot that is often referred to in the saying ‘Sick as a Parrot’ but more of that next time. We remained a First Division side for the next few years, not doing particularly well but well enough to survive until the outbreak of war depleted our squad and the next article will look in more detail at the events prior to and just after the First World War.

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