Ant Trails Ramblings

It's the fifth and final leg of our Great British Sporting Crusade and Tracy and I are at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium for the first home game of the season against Manchester United. Just in case anyone reading is not aware, I am a lifelong Tottenham Hotspur supporter. I had a season ticket in the old West Stand at the age of 10 before they knocked it down to build the New West Stand before they knocked the whole stadium down to build the new one. Being a Spurs supporter was never a conscious decision for me, it was a birthright, or some might say a life sentence. The genesis of this situation was when my father, as a young lad, was offered the opportunity to go to a match by his uncle. "Do you like blue or red?" he was asked, to which my Dad replied "Blue". Had he not I would today be a supporter of that other North London team, Woolwich Wanderers. Virtually all football clubs, like Tottenham, stay true to their geographical roots. Every now and again a team ...

No 4 in our Great British Summer sporting crusade and we're at  Wembley for the Rugby League Challenge Cup Final. This event wasn't on our original itinerary but was quickly added when we discovered that the Leigh Leopards (nee Centurions) had made the final for the first time since their glorious victory of 1971. I should explain that Leigh is Tracy's childhood home town so, previously unaligned to any English Super League team, I instantly became a Leigh fan. (Any suggestions that this was seen as a way for a Tottenham fan to be able to celebrate a trophy are roundly rejected.) Leigh Leopards (nee Centurions) also gained a second new fan with the happy coincidence that my daughter Anna had arrived in the country two days before and is actually a rugby league fan herself.  When I was a kid I didn't take much notice of rugby league. It was the game played in places 'up north' that I'd never been to, and showed by the BBC on a Saturday afternoon to fill the t...