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 White Hart Lane -
home of Tottenham Hotpsur FC |
Camden books | The Rivals Game: Inside the British Derby by Douglas Beattie| review |
A new book looks at the clubs that are too close for comfort
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WE all know the best, the most thrilling, the most important local derby match of the football season is Arsenal (the heroes of the drama) versus Tottenham Hotspur (the bullies from down the road).
But never mind the actual players and managers, the derby pitches classmates against classmates and work colleagues against work colleagues for six months in a fight for bragging rights.
Lose every other match in the season and you can still dine out on how you beat your neighbour’s team, even if it was with a lucky own goal or a disputed penalty.
BBC journalist Douglas Beattie’s new book on fan rivalry looks at this strange division and how for a couple of hours on a Saturday afternoon otherwise rock-solid friendships are tested. His nagging question is why, when we all come from north London and similar backgrounds, don’t we pull together instead of splitting our resources between two clubs? He provides a history lesson of how Arsenal muscled into the area 90-odd years ago; a bit about how Spurs have largely had to live in the shadows of the Arsenal’s success; and Tottenham’s tradition of playing eye-catching football.
It’s interesting ground even if it’s been covered before – maybe the simple answer is that we just shout at our friends across the terraces because it’s a bit of fun.
The trouble is, the rivalry can get so tense and emotional, that some people don’t see the fun in it at all. Take the knockabout footy column on the back of this newspaper – it’s supposed to be a bit of laugh, but we still get angry rival fans ringing up to complain, often in fits of temper.
But it can get worse than that, descending at times into anti-Semitic chanting, even violence, as if fans are soldiers in a war. All that from supporters who grew up on the same streets, went to the same schools and almost at random ended up either at Highbury or White Hart Lane. Beattie finds similar divisions in Manchester, Liverpool and, perhaps worst, in Birmingham where there is more than a whiff of racism. It turns out it’s not just here where we think our derby means everything.RICHARD OSLEY |
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