Singapore Spurs

Monday March 2nd 2009

Keith: Sunday night/Monday morning saw Courtney and I joining 100+ Tottenham supporters in a hotel bar for the highlight of the English footballing calendar, the Carling Cup Final. Given that everyone in Asia is supposed to support Manchester United - the only football club in the world where the sole criteria for being a supporter is to certify that you've never been within 100 miles of the ground on match day - it was a real encouragement to see so many Spurs supporters in one place. There was beer, big screens, the token Pub Bore reminiscing about great matches of the 1970s, an unusually varied selection of mixed nuts, and lots of singing - all you could ask for, in fact, aside from actually being at Wembley. Oh, and winning, of course. 

It was great to hear 'Come on you Spurs' sung with such gusto in a combination of Indian, Singaporean and North London accents - frankly, an altogether more tuneful version than anything I get from Mat or John at White Hart Lane. Courtney managed to refrain from chipping in with her own unique chant of 'Go Spurs' - and I avoided any rendition of "My old man, said be an Arsenal fan", primarily for fear that my more restrained Singaporean brethren may not appreciate the deep satire and witty juxtapositions of the next line ("I said f*** off, b*ll***s, you're a c***")

As you may know, Spurs lost the match on a penalty shoot-out, after Jamie O'Hara drove one shot down the goalkeeper's throat and David Bentley further enhanced his reputation for precision passing by missing the goal altogether. Highlight of the game, though, was seeing that cheating bastard Ronaldo booked for diving when the replay showed he had in fact been tripped by a Spurs player in the penalty area, thus confirming that (a) there is indeed a God and (b) with a sense of irony like that, He or She definitely isn't American, which leaves the state of Utah with a certain amount of explaining to do.

So at the top is a picture that Courtney took on her phone, showing me in my new 'Singapore Spurs' shirt at half time. Next year we'll put a flash on the camera. Plenty more pics on the Singapore Spurs site - the crowd believing, Courtney sharing the disappointment, the penalties, and a guy hearing the latest odds on Arsenal or Chelsea winning the Premiership.

And here's a big thanks to Eric, once a drinking companion at the Two Brewers at White Hart Lane in London and now a fellow expat. It was Eric who told me about Singapore Spurs when we met up in Hong Kong last month - he's actually set up a similar group there. Just as Obama's path to the presidency was founded on a combination of old-fashioned grassroots campaigning and ground-breaking use of the internet, so the expat Spurs crew will deploy a combination of traditional tools (beer) and more modern devices (mixed nuts) to win over Asian hearts and minds, one misguided Manchester United supporter at a time....