… it’s enough to make your heart go wooooo-ah. Wooooo-ah. Lala-lala-la-la-lala-la. We have entered the football blogosphere by desecrating an Everton fans’ favourite with a Stevenage twist and it feels bloody good. What is it that we like to profess down our way? Making history. Not living in it. Too right…
We are right to celebrate our hallowed, yet cheeky street urchin-like approach to changing English football. It has been a season where Sheffield Wednesday have been cast aside like a northern Woking, while we feel like Shania Twain towards Charlton Athletic’s inevitable title triumph – “OK, so you’re Brad Pitt…”
But history is what tells you what progress truly looks like. English author Anthony Burgess said it best – “It’s always good to remember where you come from and celebrate it. To remember where you come from is part of where you’re going.” Wednesday’s FA Cup Fifth Round replay against Tottingham is the place to start.
What were you doing when Spurs won the cup in 1991? 1981? 1967? If you are Stevenage, you’ve topped Vauxhall Football League Division Two North; won United Counties League Division One; or, for Stevenage Town, finished third in Southern League Division One. That’s where football in Stevenage has come from.
So. Where are we going? White Hart Lane for a start, and with the chance to lay on one of the FA Cup’s greatest shocks. As much as win seems unlikely, it is nice to play Tottenham in a game that isn’t the annual pre-season drubbing where showpiece signings were put on show. Y’know, like Paolo Tramezzani…
We say this with a pinch, nay, a truck-load of salt – if The Sun is to be believed, foundations for Spurs’ collapse against Woolwich Arsenal and Newton Heath were laid at The Lamex in terms of Harry’s England Hangover. Now see what we can do to help Everton and Stoke. Not Chelsea though, no-one can help them.
It’s unlikely but if Ledley King is playing, we’d sing off-key at Chris Beardsley for about six hours and then let him loose to terrorise the most famous crap knee in English football. In all seriousness though, we’d resist the urge to go 4-5-1 and start preying on the home side’s new-found defensive trauma. So:
It looks ball-achingly conventional, but it’s the Fifth Round and we might as well have a go at Totter-ingham. What is it that the Latin among the Spurs faithful say? Audere est facere – to dare is to do. We may perhaps want to warn them: We’re Stevenage Borough. We do what we like.
Surely Shroot has earned a place amoungst those listed above? Great first blog Pete, hope you continue them, they will add flavour to this great site you create and maintain.
“Making history. Not living in it”