This little lad is a ‘ball boy’ at WHL. That basically means whenever the ball goes out of play he gets it and returns it to the appropriate player. In his case, it’s usually either the goal-keeper or a mid-fielder for a corner because he sits behind the goal and these are the usual two circumstances when a ball crosses the line here.

I took the photo almost at the end of a gruelling fight that saw Spurs lose for the first time this season. So our unbeaten run of games is now over – shame! Still, there are lots of positives – we only conceded a single goal and given the competition (Man Utd) that was good – I have been in the ground when we’ve lost 3-5 to them after being 3-0 up at half time. We didn’t roll over after conceding a penalty in the first half but kept on battling and battling – we looked quite likely to score throughout the second half. That shows more grit than could be said of last season. We didn’t see the penalty on Match of the Day because we’d long since given up and gone to bed after a long, hard (!) day in the Bell and Hare, where a group of ‘football hooligans’ were giving DM advice on split ends – now when did it become OK for blokes to talk about such things – especially at the footie.

To me, the hands over the ears pose is very expressive of the game – I can’t make up my mind if he was trying to block out the cheers of the Man Utd fans or if he was trying not to hear the increasingly desperate shouts of the Spurs fans. Anyway, whatever, he’s a good symbol of the day. For me, I remain optimistic about our performances and look forward to next week’s match against Everton (away) – if we are seriously going to challenge for Europe then we have to do well in such games…..let’s see how that goes.