By Dave P
April 10 2005

Time for us to get a bit of revenge over a weakened Newcastle team this weekend and time for this column to examine what have we achieved against Newcastle in the past at this time of the year. Time for us to get a bit of revenge over a weakened Newcastle team this weekend and time for this column to examine what have we achieved against Newcastle in the past at this time of the year. We have never played them on the 10th April and indeed last season the home tie was played on March 13th. What was the score in that game? 1-0 to Tottenham courtesy of an O’Brien own goal.

To find the last time we played them at home in April we have to go back to 1998 when on the 25th of the month Les Ferdinand and Jurgen Klinsmann scored the two goals that gave us a well deserved 2-0 victory watched by 35,847 fans.

The first time we played Newcastle at home in April was on the 11th April 1925. A crowd of 23,144 came to white hart Lane to see a 3-0 victory with goals from Billy Lane anda Brace from Jimmy Dimmock.. Incidentally our opponents in the previous fixture to that were Birmingham City (at home) the day before. We had lost that game 1-0.

A lot is often said about the lack of club loyalty by modern day players and their willingness to change clubs at the drop of a hat. It is often stated that this was not true in ‘The Old Days’. So let me tell you a bit about one of the scorers on that day in 1925. William Harry Charles Lane, a dedicated Christian, teetotaller and non-smoker was a small and dapper striker who scored 9 times in 30 competitive matches for Spurs. However he also chalked up 79 in 96 league outings for Brentford and 68 in 124 for Watford including a hat-trick in 180 seconds for Watford against Clapton Orient.

In his career Billy Lane was associated with no fewer than sixteen different clubs over a 62 year period. He started with London City Mission in 1918 and then in order Gnome Athletic, Park Avenue, Spurs (who loaned him to nursery clubs Barnet and Northfleet while he was an amateur), Spurs as a professional 1924 – 1926, Leicester Fosse 1926, Walsall 1927, Reading 1928, Brentford 1929, Watford 1932, Bristol City 1936, Clapton Orient 1937 and Gravesend United briefly in April 1938. He then returned to Brentford as assistant manager and after guesting for Brighton during the war he became Guildford City’s manager from 1946 to 1950. He went back to Brighton as assistant manager and became the manager from 1951 to 1961. He then was boss of Gravesend and Northfleet from 1961 to 1963. He spent the next year as a scout for Woolwich. A short break followed and then he took a similar position at QPR four years later finally seeing out his career as a scout at Brighton until his retirement in 1970 aged 76. So much for ‘Club Loyalty’ in the ‘Good Old Days’ then.

Anyway back to the 10th April and our first ever fixture on that date was in 1897 when we visited Luton Town for a United League fixture. We lost 2-1 and our scorer was a chap called Newbigging.

Our first Football League fixture on 10th April was in 1909 (towards the end of our first season in the Football League when we gained immediate promotion to Division One). Our opponents that day as we approached the end of the season at White Hart Lane were Fulham and we ran out 1-0 winners with a Vivian Woodward goal. Incidentally Mr Shearer, Woodward held a record of 29 senior international goals for England for forty years until Tom Finney beat it in 1958.

Finally we will jump forward to the 10th April 1974 when we travelled to what was then East Germany and a Uefa Cup semi-final first leg game against Lokomotiv Leipzig. A crowd of 74,000 saw Martin Peters and Ralph Coates score in a 2-1 triumph which stood us in good stead for the return two weeks later at White Hart Lane. Chris McGrath and Martin Chivers scored the two goals that night which gave us a 4-1 aggregate victory and a place in the final against Feyenoord.

Now I hope this is not an omen but that season we won at St James’ Park and lost at White Hart Lane (Both games ended 2-0 to the away side) and at the end of the season we undertook a short tour of Mauritius in June. (We played a Mauritius Select XI three times winning the games 5-0, 6-3 and 6-0). So no repeats of the league results from that season eh Spurs. Let’s get some revenge for the FA Cup and move one step closer to such exotic locations as Leipzig.