April 17, 1961: Have You Ever Seen Tottenham Win the League?

Bill Nicholson

April 17, 1961: Tottenham Hotspur Football Club beat visiting Sheffield Wednesday, of Yorkshire, 2-1 at their home ground, White Hart Lane, in Middlesex -- not in London, North or otherwise. This gave "Spurs" the championship of the Football League First Division.

"Spurs" had previously won the League title in 1951, also at home, and also clinching against Wednesday. That time, "the Push-and-Run Spurs" included right back Alf Ramsey, who would manage England to win the World Cup in 1966; and wing-half Bill Nicholson. Now 42, Scarborough, North Yorkshire native "Bill Nick" was their manager.

White Hart Lane, in its 1934 to 1980 configuration

They fell behind inside half an hour, but Bobby Smith tied the score with 3 minutes to go before halftime. Les Allen scored moments later, and the Lilywhites hung on for victory on a Monday night.

As a newspaper put it the next day, "It was a nervy, and often far too passionate, battle played out in a hot, seething atmosphere of a 61,000 crowd which had about it something of the clamour of a Plaza de Toros." (A bullfighting ring in Spain.)

After the game, the crowd chanted, "We want Danny! We want Danny!" for the team's Captain, Danny Blanchflower, a 35-yer-old right half from Belfast, Northern Ireland.

It was Blanchflower who gave Spurs -- along with the Latin phrase Audere est Facere ("to dare is to do") -- their motto: "This game is about glory." In full:

The great fallacy is that the game is first and last about winning. It is nothing of the kind. The game is about glory, it is about doing things in style and with a flourish, about going out and beating the other lot, not waiting for them to die of boredom.

Ever since, Spurs fans have run with this idea, claiming to be not only great, but stylish, playing "champagne football," and, to the tune of "The Battle Hymn of the Republic," singing, "Glory, glory, Tottenham Hotspur."

On May 6, 19 days later, Spurs would win the FA Cup Final, beating Leicester City of the Midlands, to become the 1st team to win both the League and the Cup -- "The Double" -- in the 20th Century, since Birmingham's Aston Villa did it in 1897.

It made Spurs, however briefly, the most popular team in England. They went on to win the FA Cup again in 1962 and 1967, and the European Cup Winners' Cup in 1963, making them the 1st British team to win any European tournament.

As of April 17, 2022, Spurs have never won the League again. Meanwhile, their North London arch-rivals, Arsenal Football Club, have won it 6 times since then. Arsenal fans sing:

Have you ever seen Tottenham win the League?

Have you ever seen Tottenham win the League?

Have you ever seen Tottenham

ever seen Tottenham

ever seen Tottenham win the League?

The proper response is then yelled, to apply to anyone not old enough to actually remember 1961: "Have you fuck!"

Here's the count of English football champions, in the old Football League First Division from 1962 to 1992, and then in the Premier League from 1993 to the most recent completed season of 2021: Manchester United 15, Liverpool 14, Manchester City 6, Arsenal 6, Chelsea 5, Everton 4, Leeds United 3, Derby County 2, Leicester City 1, Blackburn Rovers 1, Aston Villa 1, Nottingham Forest 1, Ipswich Town 1, Tottenham Hotspur 0.

Spurs' pretentions to "glory" and "champagne football" have long since collapsed in dust; and while they have dared much in the last 60 years, they have done previous little. Especially since their 1991 FA Cup win: Just 2 League Cups, and not even reaching the Final of the FA Cup, going 0-8 in Semifinals, including losing to Arsenal in 1993 and 2001.

They can cite Arsenal's South London (actually Kent) origins, calling them "Woolwich," all they want. It just makes them look like fools. "North London is ours"? Since at least 1971, when Arsenal, also on a Monday night, won the League at White Hart Lane, that statement has been bollocks.

"North London." About that: The London Government Act 1963 meant a reorganization of local governments in Britain's capital region, taking effect on April 1, 1965. Section 3 abolished the administrative counties of London and Middlesex, and absorbed parts of the counties of Kent, Essex, Surrey and Hertfordshire (but leaving the rest of those counties), plus the whole of the City of London, to form the administrative area of "Greater London."

So when Tottenham fans say, "We were the first club in London to (achieve whatever they say they'd achieved)," unless it hadn't been done before the Spring of 1965, and then they did it first, they're either lying, or they don't know what they're talking about.

And when they claim that Arsenal have only been in North London since 1913, that's true; but when they claim, "North London is ours!" they're wrong: They may have been in Tottenham (or in postal code N17) since 1882, and at the White Hart Lane site since 1899, but they have only been in London since 1965. It doesn't matter than they didn't cross the border, the border crossed them: Arsenal were in London over half a century before they were.

Bill Nicholson managed Tottenham until 1974, and died in 2004. He is now honored with a statue outside Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, which replaced White Hart Lane in 2019. A pair of gates leading to The Lane, made famous in the photograph of him shown above, were renamed the Bill Nicholson Gates, and were preserved at the new stadium.

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April 17, 1961 was a Monday. Norman Julius Esiason, later to be the quarterback and radio show host known as Boomer, was born.

Only 3 games were played in Major League Baseball that day:

* The New York Yankees beat the Kansas City Athletics, 3-0 at Yankee Stadium. Whitey Ford pitched a 3-hit shutout. Mickey Mantle went 3-for-3 with 3 RBIs, including the 1st of 54 home runs he would hit that season. Roger Maris went 0-for-3, and was still looking for his 1st homer. He would go on to hit 61. Yogi Berra went 0-for-2 with 2 walks.

* The Boston Red Sox beat the Los Angeles Angels, 3-2 at Fenway Park in Boston. Carl Yastrzemski, the rookie the BoSox were counting on to succeed Ted Williams in left field, went 0-for-4.

* And the St. Louis Cardinals beat the Los Angeles Dodgers, 9-5 at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum. Stan Musial went 1-for-4, and Bob Gibson was the winning pitcher. Duke Snider hit a home run for the Dodgers, who led 4-2 going into the 8th inning, but the Cards scored 3 in the 8th and 4 in the 9th to win it.

Football was out of season. The NHL season had ended the day before, as the Chicago Black Hawks beat the Detroit Red Wings, 5-1 at the Olympia Stadium in Detroit, in Game 6 of the Stanley Cup Finals. It was their 1st Cup win since 1938. It would take until 2010 for them to win another.

The NBA season had ended 6 days before, as the Boston Celtics beat the St. Louis Hawks, 121-112 at the Boston Garden, to take the Finals in 5 games.