By Dave P
November 6 2004

Lets go back to November 6th 1899 when we played a South East London / Kent side at home. Our opponents on that day in the Southern District Combination were Chatham. We won 8-0. ON this day no 16 in an occasional series

Another team we have not met 'on this day' before now.

Given todays events I was unsure whether to go ahead with this but life goes on. I thought about looking for results gained on a managers first game and they (on the whole) make good reading, eg. Bill Nicks 10-4 against Everton but then why dwell on what is shocking news and why make more of it than need be. Jol takes over, life carries on and the new Spurs revolution continues.

So having said that lets go back to November 6th 1899 when we played a South East London / Kent side at home. Our opponents on that day in the Southern District Combination were Chatham. We won 8-0. I have no other records of that game but the Southern District Combination Table for that season is worthy of mention;

1. Millwall 16 12 2 2 30 10 26
2. Tottenham 15 10 3 2 40 16 23
3. Portsmouth 16 9 2 5 30 16 20
4. Woolwich Arsnl 15 7 1 7 25 21 15
5. Bristol C. 16 5 3 8 25 32 13
6. Southampton 16 5 2 9 23 30 12
7. Reading 16 4 4 8 16 28 12
8. Chatham 16 5 2 9 12 35 12
9. QPR 16 4 1 11 19 28 9


There were 9 teams in total in that competition and you will notice that Spurs and Woolwich only played 15 games whereas everyone else played 16. The reason for this was that the game between Woolwich Arsenal and Tottenham at Plumstead Common was abandoned afetr 55 minutes (with the scum leading 2-1) due to crowd trouble and was never replayed.

I like to choose unusual games for this feature as well and one such match took place in the 1979/1980 season when on 6th November Spurs played a friendly fixture against Widad, Morocco on Neutral Territory and won 4-2 with Spurs Goals from Chris Jones (2), Michael Beavon and Glenn Hoddle. If anyone heas any info regarding this game I would be interested to hear about it as my records are somewhat lacking.


Finally I will mention another London Derby on 6th November 1943 when we played Brentford in the Football League South. A wartime fixture that we won 2-0 with 2 goals from out 'guest' Rowley.

Whether or not this was the same Rowley who was on our books between 1930 and 31, I cannot be sure as Guest players were common in the war years. A Richard William Morris Rowley played for Spurs as a centre forward between February 1930 and December 1931 and was an Irish International. he left to go to Preston North End in 1934. Was this the same Rowley I wonder.

As a sidenote to a war season and guest appearances it was not uncommon for certain players to play under pseudonyms. The press knew who they were but used the false name in any reports to protect the players identities.

No-one fell into this category for Spurs during the second world war but in the past Spurs had Bunks (1894), Bach (1895) and Slender (1919) registered as players. These were all Pseudonyms to protect the players true identities. Now I wonder who they were really.