Spurs on this day - No 49 in an occasional series

By Dave P
May 7 2005

The penultimate game of the season and still something to play for in the league. Rare times at Tottenham indeed. A look through the record shows that we have played Middlesbrough in May on only one previous occasion and that was on the 3rd May 2003. The less said about that encounter the better really so I will mention that Jamie Redknapp scored our goal in a 5-1 defeat :-(

Looking back over our records of May 7th matches does not make for any prettier reading either :-( - May 7th 1977 and the penultimate game of that season saw us travel to Maine road and the score on that day was 5-0 to them.

I thought I would go back a bit further and see what I could find and came up with a game at the Hawthorns (again a penultimate game of the season) in 1966. That one ended 2-1 to West Brom so no win there either. Our goal on that day was scored by Eddie Clayton. Eddie scored 26 goals for us in 133 first team appearances (20 goals in 92 outings in Division 1). He joined Spurs as an amateur in 1955 and turned pro in 1957. He struggled to get many games though due to the quality of the players around him. In fact the 1965/66 season was his best as he only missed 4 games. After leaving Spurs he went to Southend and two years later joined Margate before ending his career at Aylesbury.

One of the problems in looking for games on this day at this time of the year is that we have not played that many as the season used to usually end in April however in 1949 our last 2nd division game was away to Plymouth Argyle. We won the game 5-0 with goals from Len Duquemin, a Les Bennett Hat Trick and a Les Medley Goal.

Les Medley was born in Edmonton, playing for Edmonton, London and Middlesex Schools before playing for Tottenham Juniors. After Playing for England Juniors he joined Spurs as an amateur in 1935 gaining professional status in September 1939. Come the war he guested for Orient, Aldershot, Millwall and West Ham before joining the RAF and serving in Canada wher he met his wife. After settling in England his wife became homesick and so he emigrated to Canada wgere he played for Toronto Greenbacks and Ulster United before coming ‘home’ to play for Spurs from January 1948 until he retired in May 1953. He then returned to Canada and also coached Randfontein in South Africa. He was our top scorer in the 1949/50 2nd division Champion side and scored 11 in the championship side of 1950/51. In the league he scored 45 goals in 150 games – not bad for a winger. He died in Ontario Canada in January 2001.

A number of other games on 7th May in the past were friendlies and I have dug out a couple that will interest Matt G. In 1954 on a tour of Germany and Austria we played S.V Hamburg and drew 2-2 with goals from Sonny Walters and Les Bennett.

And going back even further, on 7th May 1911 on another German Tour we played a North German XI winning the game 4-1. Unfortunately there is no record of any of the scorers on that tour which also included games against Preussen (won 7-0), Hertha FC (won 4-1), Werder FC (won 8-1), Eintract FC (won 4-1) and Kickers Victoria (won 6-0)

An early European Tour and if things go right today we could be up for a more serious European Tour.

Come on you Lilywhites