8.05pm 14 January 2020
FA Cup, Third Round Replay
Tottenham Hotspur 2 Middlesbrough 1 (att 49,202)
Recompleting the 92 clubs that make up the Premier and Football Leagues in England can be a chore. The likely hassle of securing a ticket to visit the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium didn't fill me with enthusiasm when the club finally moved into its new home.
Cup matches are usually a good bet to go on general sale though, and Spurs sensibly reduced prices for this midweek replay. Their website was well designed to cope with high demand, with an efficient and swift queueing system, and by last Friday lunchtime I had a pair of tickets. Not quite in my hand, but in my email inbox.
Even with a booking fee the print-at-home tickets were good value, and preferable to paying around twice as much for a Premier League fixture.
Practicalities aside, another reason visits to new grounds at this level aren't great is that the venues are too often soulless and forgettable. That's is emphatically not the case here. The Tottenham Hotspur Stadium may have a dull name (at least until a suitably-lucrative sponsor is snared) but it must be the best stadium in the British Isles, and among the most impressive in Europe.
That it's been built on the site of its hemmed-in predecessor - with minimal if any pitch overlap, hence a new ground even by my obsessive compulsive rules - is remarkable.
A crowd of close to 50,000 for a midweek FA Cup replay, in miserable weather and live on BBC TV, is good going. Middlesbrough fans faced a huge round trip, yet still sold their entire allocation and deserve maximum credit.
Shame they didn't have a much to cheer. They gifted Spurs an early goal, and when a second followed soon after it looked like being a matter of how many the hosts would score. But they didn't manage a third and Middlesbrough, much improved in the second half, made them sweat when they pulled a late goal back.
They couldn't force extra time though, which was shame as it would have been one in the eye for the many home fans who decided to leave several minutes before the end. To be fair it was a late kick off and a late finish, but why go at all if you're going to leave more than five minutes from the end of a finely-poised cup tie that could yet go to extra time and penalties?
FA Cup, Third Round Replay
Tottenham Hotspur 2 Middlesbrough 1 (att 49,202)
Recompleting the 92 clubs that make up the Premier and Football Leagues in England can be a chore. The likely hassle of securing a ticket to visit the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium didn't fill me with enthusiasm when the club finally moved into its new home.
Cup matches are usually a good bet to go on general sale though, and Spurs sensibly reduced prices for this midweek replay. Their website was well designed to cope with high demand, with an efficient and swift queueing system, and by last Friday lunchtime I had a pair of tickets. Not quite in my hand, but in my email inbox.
Even with a booking fee the print-at-home tickets were good value, and preferable to paying around twice as much for a Premier League fixture.
Practicalities aside, another reason visits to new grounds at this level aren't great is that the venues are too often soulless and forgettable. That's is emphatically not the case here. The Tottenham Hotspur Stadium may have a dull name (at least until a suitably-lucrative sponsor is snared) but it must be the best stadium in the British Isles, and among the most impressive in Europe.
That it's been built on the site of its hemmed-in predecessor - with minimal if any pitch overlap, hence a new ground even by my obsessive compulsive rules - is remarkable.
A crowd of close to 50,000 for a midweek FA Cup replay, in miserable weather and live on BBC TV, is good going. Middlesbrough fans faced a huge round trip, yet still sold their entire allocation and deserve maximum credit.
Shame they didn't have a much to cheer. They gifted Spurs an early goal, and when a second followed soon after it looked like being a matter of how many the hosts would score. But they didn't manage a third and Middlesbrough, much improved in the second half, made them sweat when they pulled a late goal back.
They couldn't force extra time though, which was shame as it would have been one in the eye for the many home fans who decided to leave several minutes before the end. To be fair it was a late kick off and a late finish, but why go at all if you're going to leave more than five minutes from the end of a finely-poised cup tie that could yet go to extra time and penalties?
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