Yesterday's match at White Hart Lane between Tottenham and Newcastle served as a welcome reminder of football's occasional ability to rise above the hum-drum and produce a genuine story-book ending.
Newcastle simply had no right to win the game. Missing a whole team, and a bloody good one at that, through injuries, they were most decimated in defence - reduced to fielding a back four of a right-winger and three raw, if talented, youngsters.
Early on a rout seemed on the cards, as Spurs poured forward with pace and verve and could have had four inside ten minutes. Surely Newcastle couldn't hold on? They didn't, Defoe had the ball in the net on 13, his third good chance, ironically this one was offside. Yet however inexperienced Newcastle's defence may have been, they had Given, and he was all that mattered. Captain in Parker's absence, he was as acrobatic in the early stages as Robinson was static when the ball drilled through his legs to make it 1-1. Spurs had led for just two minutes, and the scorer was the 19-year old left-back Huntingdon, in just his eighth appearance for the club. Boys-own stuff indeed. His other fullback wasn't doing badly either- Solano was everywhere, coming up with several goal-saving blocks as Spurs laid siege again. One such lunge to deny Tainio met with rough-justice as the rebound fell to Berbatov, who volleyed down into the ground and in. It looked like game over. Surely Tottenham, boasting a home record bettered only by Manchester United and Liverpool, would go on and win comfortably.
Thankfully football takes no notice of statistics. After Martins had smashed the equaliser Spurs looked stunned. So stunned, in fact, that they neglected to track Butt's midfield run and the game was lost. Butt, the match-winner, had of course spent all-week in bed with flu, losing 9lb's in the process. To add to the irony, he could easily have been sent off at half-time after an unsightly fracas first with Chimbonda and then his own team-mates. But that would have ruined the story.
Spurs will hang their heads, 24 shots and just two goals tells the tale, but they should take comfort from this when they next find themselves in trouble, and remember that occasionally the story-book comes true.
