It is quite something, Welcome to White Hart Lane in a sense as you have always known it, as you will perhaps forever remember it but will never see it again. Bill Nicholson Way, number 748 High Road Tottenham is due for demolition and rebirth and today a football club which has forever embraced the sporting endeavour of human beings of flesh and blood glories nostalgically in bricks and water.
Manchester United, for once the undercard, today as Spurs, near confirmed Premier League runners up, host them. We celebrate the fabric of a building, a site, a home. A home of Sandy Brown and Jimmy Dimmock long before any of us can remember, Bill Nicholson and Danny Blanchflower and Dave Mackay. Cliff Jones and Jimmy Greaves, the great Jimmy Greaves. Venables, Mullery, Jennings, Chivers and Peters. Perryman and Hughton, Ardiles and Villa, Crooks and Archibald. Hoddle and Waddle, Allen, Gascoigne, Lineker, Klinsmann, Ginola, Sheringham, Ferdinand, Bale, Modric, many glittering others and now the home of Alli and Kane.
And somehow fittingly the visitors are a historical kinder in spirit, showbiz, glamour, entertainment, buzz, glory glory Man United visit Glory Glory Tottenham Hotspur. And the cockerel gazes down from its perch and the Spurs come marching in.
The site and the soundtrack of the Lane, 118 years across three different centuries.
And now the teams…
…
Match number 2533 at White Hart Lane, and the cockerel gets pic’d every week. Golden and glorious, an emblem of tradition at a club of tradition, Audere Est Facere, To Dare is to Do. And down the years they’ve done things properly here, its a club that prides itself on style, its a club that puts on an occasion, it’s a club that has won the greatest honours in the domestic game and it won’t be quite the same once its not this place anymore.
- Peter Drury's opening monologue