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Ryan Mason: Friends Reunited

6 min read
by Ritch Grove
Ritch Groves had fallen out of love with Spurs, the off-field antics and sacking of Martin Jol had finally broken him, then one day in a League Cup match, a local lad stepped up. Ryan Mason, the serial loanee reminded Ritch what it was to love Spurs. From that moment on, he had his Tottenham […]

It was a little over an hour into a fairly uneventful midweek meeting between Tottenham and Hull City when the song rang out over White Hart Lane. It was quickly apparent that this was a special moment for quite a few in the crowd, myself included. Ryan Mason, born just six miles from White Hart Lane and part of the club for 17 of his 25 years, was being introduced as a substitute for the visitors.

It was a short and less than newsworthy series of events that led Mason from a key role at Spurs out to Hull City in a little under 2 years. A knee injury side-lined him for key months in the winter of 2015, while new faces and partnerships were developed on the field, forcing him away from contention for the first team – a place that he’d worked for years to win. Quickly apparent he wasn’t coming back, he moved away. I know I’m not alone however, in wondering what might have been for a talented player who so obviously bled Tottenham Hotspur. For me, the brief association is particularly personal, and I think it will always be an important one in my own Tottenham story.

[linequote]Ryan Mason, He’s one of our own!”[/linequote]

This tale begins bizarrely enough in the winter of 2007, when I fell out of love with Tottenham Hotspur, hating what I thought it had become. Like the end of many a relationship, the signs of coming fallout are plain in hindsight, but come in such subtle increments that you can fool yourselves into thinking that the impending break up is in fact not happening at all.

It’s no surprise to those who know me that I had (and still have) deep admiration for Martin Jol. It was love at first joke with Martin for me, and after the peculiar vanishing Jacques Santini, the wise-cracking Dutchman was just the tonic I felt we’d all been crying out for.

If we skip forward a couple of typically frustrating but progressive years from his arrival, events behind the scene were doing what ‘events behind the scene’ are wont to do- and Levy was getting ready to roll his dice again. Nobody here should need the final act of Jol’s reign recounting. His ‘death by a thousand whispers’ is as famous as any farce in modern football, culminating as it allegedly did in fait accompli by text message. Daniel Levy, already a divisive figure now appeared to me to be throwing away the very reputation of the club.

[linequote]Alan Sugar turned the club into a circus, and now it seemed Levy had robbed us of any class[/linequote]

Back then, I’d seen enough. I’d watched Irving Scholar sell us virtually into bankruptcy, Alan Sugar turn the club into a circus, and now it seemed Levy had robbed us of any class. I promised myself (and anyone who’d listen) that not one day and not one penny would I spend until we’d had an apology for such a stunning lack of respect. Into the bin went my membership. I would not to cross the threshold again, thank you very much for the memories.

Looking back, those seven years of exile were entirely self-defeating. In the end of course I came back, though I never got to hear the apology (although Jol later wrote that Levy had treated him very well). Recounting this anecdote now tends to elicit the same response… “What? You missed Bale and Modric? by choice?” and yes, I did. I adored Martin Jol’s Tottenham- warts and all- and that which came after seemed tawdry, not to mention how stubborn I can be when minded so.

I still followed the team of course, but at home, listening on the radio or watching the TV. I just couldn’t bring myself to let it go, and apart from a couple of notable occasions I just didn’t feel any real connection to them. Throughout AVB and Sherwood the distance between my club and I only seemed to grow bigger. Pochettino’s arrival appeared to herald some return of sense, though it was hardly the marquee appointment many had yearned for. In truth, I can say to have been ambivalent at best in the summer of 2014, and that’s how it looked to stay.

That is, however, until one night in September. When perennial loanee Ryan Mason replaced Benjamin Stambouli in the League Cup tie with Nottingham Forest, he turned the game on its head and scored a memorable first goal. Something that had been niggling at me could no longer be denied, I was intrigued. There was just something about this night that caught me.

That game was the turning point, something just felt different. I found myself watching more and more as the year went on, as Mason established himself alongside former butt of jokes Nabil Bentaleb in the side, they epitomised a resurgence of vigour in a team reinvented, shorn of its malignant appendages.

Pochettino had clearly extracted the poison at Spurs early, and in the trust he placed in these two was writ large as they faced each game with dynamism (though of course another local boy was set to snatch the limelight). By Easter I was hooked again. They may have come unstuck against the tedious machinery of Chelsea at Wembley, but the team had found a way to connect with me in a way that I hadn’t seen coming. In April I returned to White Hart Lane for the first time since September 2007, jonesing for a hit that I hadn’t experienced in years.

[linequote]Ryan Mason; he wasn’t perfect, but for me his imperfections served only to emphasise his value[/linequote]

On my return, I wasn’t overcome by rapture of love regained but instead felt something more cerebral, more tangible. There were finally people at my club with whom I could identify, after so many players who had presumably learned of the club through their agent. This last two years have felt markedly different from any of the other new dawns that we’ve seen.

Tottenham seems to have undergone a much-needed detox, and ironically for me it’s the hand of Levy who has orchestrated it after all. Almost as if the Football Club has woken sweating and disorientated from a bad dream, the crass apprentices have been denied their prize in the nick of time. There before us now in lilywhite are the embodiment of vitalised, focused modernity.

No one has epitomised it more for me than Ryan Mason; he wasn’t perfect, but for me his imperfections served only to emphasise his value. Never going to Madrid for sure, but he’d go through you at a moment’s notice, and that’s not to deny the talent he showed with the ball as well. It was a very sad day for me when he signed for Hull, and feels like a story cut far too short; by injury, luck, and by the lack of sentimentality by which Pochettino has transformed our previously bloated, self-interested club.

In years to come we’ll perhaps eulogise about Kane, Toby and Jan, or Dier, but personally I’ll always thank Ryan Mason for bringing me home for this team. He is, after all, one of our own.

All views and opinions expressed in this article are the views and opinions of the writer and do not necessarily represent the views of The Fighting Cock. We offer a platform for fans to commit their views to text and voice their thoughts. Football is a passionate game and as long as the views stay within the parameters of what is acceptable, we encourage people to write, get involved and share their thoughts on the mighty Tottenham Hotspur.

Ritch Grove

1 Comment

  1. Charlie
    24/01/2017 @ 2:48 pm

    Great article, thanks. I love these personal stories. We each have one. Many Spurs fans seem to have more interesting ones than fans of other clubs for whatever reason; probably something to do with our rollercoaster, false dawn and yet glamorous history, falling in and out of love.

    You wrote before Ryan’s head injury at Chelsea. I do sincerely hope he can make a full recovery as a person first, and then as a top footballer. I remember that moment against Forest too. Even at the time, let alone with hindsight, it seemed more than just a turning point in a match. A signpost to a future.

    And somehow his brave goal away at Sunderland was another turning point. I was on business in USA that day and saw the score flash through on my phone, only later reading about the injury Ryan suffered scoring it. A wrong turn in a career.

    Everything I know about Poch leads me to believe he was simply being ‘cruel to be kind’ with Ryan Mason. The boy’s talent and aptitude deserve a proper career playing every week at a PL Club. He might love Spurs as much as us and so make the wrong personal decision by staying too long, striving for a first team place no longer there for him. The Hulls of this world need many more Ryan Masons. But Poch’s midfield needs more than Ryan could provide us.

    I could never understand pockets of criticism of Ryan on some Spurs fan forums and pubs. Criticise a player for taking the money without trying, kissing the badge without really caring. But don’t criticise a man giving his best just because he isn’t quite Modric, Dembele or Kane.

    Especially when he is, indeed, ‘one of our own’.
    I hope he returns to our new stadium to a rousing reception many times.

    Charlie

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