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This preview was written by Brian Judson

Our previous results against Fulham have been as follows:

Season   Div  H   A
1908-09   2  1-0 3-2
1919-20   2  4-0 4-1
1932-33   2  0-0 2-2
1935-36   2  2-2 2-1
1936-37   2  1-1 3-3
1937-38   2  1-1 1-3
1938-39   2  1-0 0-1
1946-47   2  1-1 1-1
1947-48   2  0-2 2-0
1948-49   2  1-1 1-1
1950-51   1  2-1 1-0
1951-52   1  1-0 2-1
1959-60   1  1-1 1-1
1960-61   1  5-1 0-0
1961-62   1  4-2 1-1
1962-63   1  1-1 2-0
1963-64   1  1-0 1-1
1964-65   1  3-0 1-4
1965-66   1  4-3 2-0
1966-67   1  4-2 4-3
1967-68   1  2-2 2-1

Previous FA Cup ties with Fulham have been:-

1908-09 FAC2   Spurs  1 Fulham 0  Minter  33,008
1983-84 FAC3   Fulham 0 Spurs  0          23,398
1983-84 FAC3R  Spurs  2 Fulham 0  Roberts 32,898
                                  Archibald
1997-98 FAC3   Spurs  3 Fulham 1 Clemence, Calderwood
                                 Taylor (o.g.)
                                          27,909

FL Cup
1981-82   4    Spurs 1 Fulham 0  Hazard   30,214

Tomorrow night's Worthington's Football League Cup tie against Fulham will renew links with a club who helped to spur our club from playing as an amateur club to one as a professional club.

In 1893, Fulham had a player on their books called Ernie Payne. He was not being picked by Fulham during the autumn of 1893, despite having been a regular in their side the previous season. In those days there was no such thing as contracts and players could and did switch clubs if they were unhappy about the way they were treated, subject, of course, to seven days notice to the club who had the player on their books. Payne turned up at Tottenham one day and asked to play for the team. Spurs agreed and Payne hurried back to Fulham to collect his kit but could not find his boots. He reported back to Tottenham, who gave him 10 shillings to go and buy a new pair of boots. Payne did so and turned out for Tottenham.

But Fulham got to hear about it and accused Tottenham of poaching their player and offering him inducements to play for him [the boots!] and therefore acting as if they were a professional club.

At that time, the London Football Association, which Tottenham were members of, were violently against professionalism. They investigated the affair and banned Tottenham for 14 days, despite the fact that Payne took the trouble to repay the 10 shillings to Tottenham in order to escape being tagged a professional and banned indefinitely from playing football.

It was a straw in the wind and within two years, Tottenham had taken the plunge and become a professional club with the intention of gaining election to the Football League. Although they applied in 1896, they were unsuccessful then and had to wait for a further twelve years before they gained admission to the League.

As a schoolboy growing up in the 1950s, Fulham were a glamorous side in some respects because they had Johnny Haynes. Haynes was born at Edmonton but chose to play for Fulham rather than Tottenham because he knew his style would not fit in with Arthur Rowe's push and run tactics as Haynes preferred to play the long ball. Haynes was, probably, an earlier edition of Hoddle with his measured chips and through passes. He won 56 England caps for England, many of them as captain, before his career as an international player was ended by a terrible car crash in which he was very lucky to survive.

Haynes was the first £100-a-week footballer. I suspect Tommy Trinder, the comedian who was Chairman of Fulham, regretted ever making that promise to Haynes that he would pay him £100-a-week if the maximum £20-a-week wages was ever abolished. Funnily enough, it was another Fulham player, Jimmy Hill, who, as Chairman of the PFA, led the battle to break the maximum wage structure by threatening the players would go on indefinite strike. The players won the battle and thus we now have the sight of ordinary players enjoying salaries that are just a dream to the supporters who shiver on the terraces.

Fulham were a modest team who were the Coventry City of their day. Every single pundit used to tip them to be relegated before a ball was kicked in anger. Most seasons they would look dead and buried with just weeks to go and then pull off some of the most unlikeliest results ever seen. But in 1967-68, the inevitable happened when Fulham went to the well once too often ..... They are still waiting to regain their place in the top tier and not so long ago looked more likely to be gracing the Conference rather than the Premier.

It is a very rare event that Tottenham complain publicly about another club but they did so in the 1960s when Fulham had an advertisement in their programme about venereal disease and an unfortunate juxtaposition in the programme placed the notes about Tottenham adjoining this notice. Fulham were forced to publicly apologise to Tottenham in the media and in their own as well as Tottenham's programme.

Since the 1960s, we have rarely played Fulham. Those of us who were at Craven Cottage in January 1984 had the good fortune to see Graham Roberts playing the game of his life in goal after Ray Clemence had gone off injured. Clemence did not play again that season which gave Tony Parks his chance ....

Roberts flung himself about all afternoon and somehow Spurs managed to keep a clean sheet. He must be one of the few goalkeepers who can boast a 100 per cent clean sheet record!

But the game I remember most about Fulham is one played in February 1967. Spurs won 4-2 thanks to goals by Cliff Jones, who scored twice, Greaves and Gilzean, but that isn't why I remember the game! One Terry Venables was playing for Tottenham and his big mate, Fred Callaghan, was playing for Fulham. They both forgot that a very fussy, officious referee, Harry New, was in charge. The play was slow so they thought they'd have a joke and liven things up a bit and pretended to handbag each other. Harry New strode over and without any further ado pointed to the dressing room. He waved all protests aside and pointed to the tunnel to the dressing room. Bill Nicholson was furious with Venables and presumably gave him a very uncomfortable ticking off after the game, particularly as the dismissal meant that Venables would miss some important games coming up.

And yet there is another game I remember that demonstrated perfectly why Cliff Jones was so popular with Tottenham's fans. A season earlier, Spurs were heading for mid-table boredom as they were out of the running for the League title, they were soon to be eliminated at Preston North End in the Cup and nothing much was left other than blooding some of the youngsters. For example, one they blooded that season was a very slim, very shy Joe Kinnear ... yes, the same fat barrel of lard that collapsed with a heart attack last January at Hillsborough ....

But to return to Cliff Jones .... three times in the match against Fulham, Cliff flung himself into a forest of legs and boots and scored a hat-trick. Each time he came out of the ruck, sporting more damage. In one attack, he almost knocked himself out colliding with the goal post. In another he lost two teeth as he was kicked in the face. And he still went back for more .... and what do we get from some of our so-called professionals today?

Small wonder that in October 1968 when Cliff Jones played his last game for Tottenham before signing for Fulham there were many of us openly crying because one of our favourite sons was leaving us ........

Tomorrow night, there will be a definite result. Hopefully, we will win but Sol Campbell will have to be at his best as Karl-Heinz Riedle seems to have recaptured his form since joining Fulham. They have many players who have played in the Premier League, including Lee Clark and Chris Coleman. It won't be an easy game and we will have to play much better than we did on Sunday .....

I'm forecasting the game to go to extra time and for Spurs to win in extra-time, 2-1.

Cheers, Brian

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