Clik here to view.
Our Los Angeles Spurs group enthusiastically meet weekly at our local, The Greyhound Bar, where 40 to sometimes 200 supporters regularly congregate to chant often saucy but brilliant soccer songs and go a little mental. Spurs are having a possibly magical season with a top-4 Premiership finish and two Cup finals in view -- so we've been going football crazy.
To commemorate this ongoing season, our LA supporters' club president Brian Moore asked us to contribute bios to our group's Facebook page, so here's mine.
I've been a Spurs fan since I was a nipper growing up in Newport, Wales, which seemed like a million miles away on the M-4 from North London. My dad, Ashley Sr., is an inveterate Man-U fan, and clearly expected me to follow in his shoes. So he must've spilled his cuppa when I came out as a Lilywhite supporter: "Come on you, Spurs!"
Clik here to view.
How did it happen? I think it's because of our lovely mum, Nancy, who always had an eye for something special. She first saw Tom Jones perform on Top of the Pops. She also had a fine sense of style and fashion. She admitted watching Spurs playing in dazzling all-white (with no names or sponsor logos clogging up the jerseys) on European nights and pointed out how fabulous we looked and played. She was always busy bringing up us six kids, but she also found time to recall quotes from our captain Danny Blanchflower from our glorious early 1960s.
One quote epitomizes why I love Spurs and why I will be "Tottenham Till I Die."
Clik here to view.
Danny Blanchflower, captain of legendary Tottenham team"Danny Boy," which is the name of my new spec movie script, once said of Spurs:
The game is about glory. It's about doing things in style, with a flourish, about going out and beating the other lot, not waiting for them to die of boredom.
Oh, man, that encapsulates Spurs for me. I've never seen us win the League, but that quote by the man who captained us to the League and FA Cup double in 1960-61, is what I hope Spurs continue to strive for. We have a unique history, we're named after a dashing knight written about by Shakespeare (Sir Harry Hotspur), and we've always had footballers who play with style -- Hoddle, Ardiles, Gazza, Ginola, Bale and now Kane and Alli.
Clik here to view.
But the Spurs player who became my boyhood hero was local London lad, Jimmy Greaves. Our mum loved Greavsie and his mischievous Cockney smile, and legendary goal-scoring exploits. Seeing this gifted goal-scorer knock in goals with both feet and with his head, to see him just glide by opponents was mesmerizing. His Lilywhite jersey hardly ever got muddied because, like Barca's Messi today, he had incredible balance, and would just ride over tackles. Then he'd calmly pass the ball into the net. He was unpretentious, cheeky, handsome and he was ours! I loved Greavsie so much, I named my first pet after him -- dad surprisingly came home with a budgie, feathered in Tottenham white/blue, for a birthday present, and I named him Jimmy. And the bird could sing like Greavsie could "sing" on the football pitch.
Clik here to view.
My hero Jimmy Greaves outside famous White Hart LaneI met Greavsie twice as a kid. The first time wa