The expression “there is more than one way of skinning a cat” springs to my mind today. I’m in mourning for the loss of Sky Sports from my life. We’re doing our budgeting for my new straitened circumstances as a student and have finally given in to the knowledge that we can no longer justify Sky Sports so we can watch Spurs. The cost of the channel is outrageous unless you are a real sportaholic and watch everything going but we only ever watched Sky Sports News on Saturday afternoons to watch Geoff doing the footie round-up and Sky Sports 1 on the odd occasion when Spurs had a live match on.

When they announced the schedule for the first half of the season and there were only three Spurs matches covered by Sky, we did the sums and very quickly realised that even if we could afford it (which makes the calculation academic because we can’t) we just can’t justify it anymore. It would work out at a cost of £120 to see three matches - £40 per match……you can buy a ticket and sit in a stand at White Hart lane for that amount of money.

It is, though, a big wrench for me. I’ve had access to special sports channels even since before Sky came into existence because I lived in an area of Oxford with cable TV in the early 80s so had access to Eurosport etc even back then.

So, what did we do when, for the first time since we lost the coverage, there was a full league programme? We tuned into Talksport on the radio and played scrabble while we listened in for news of Spurs game. Then we caught up with the goals on Match of the Day so we did actually see some action albeit only a little.

Did it satisfy us in the same way that it would have done had we had Geoff available to us? Nope. Did it make me sad? Yep. Did we do the wrong thing? Nope. We needed to do it. Did we end up having fun? Yes, we did…..a different kind of fun for sure but fun nonetheless.

The trouble is that when we came to Cornwall, I gave up my season ticket reluctantly but felt I wouldn’t become isolated from Spurs because of Sky. Now my last link to seeing a live game has gone and I feel bereft. I have to find another way of “skinning a cat” to get back inline with seeing my team and at the moment, I can’t think of a single one.

I know, I know, there are folks with a worse lot than me in life and in the grand scheme of things this is a small sacrifice but it doesn’t mean it’s felt any less acutely.