Uni Watch

Forming the sandwich around my visit to Lord’s Cricket Ground on a recent trip to London were two visits to Tottenham Hotspur Stadium with a group from DC Spurs, the supporters’ group in the nation’s capital, to take in a Premier League match. Some of us also did a stadium tour and the Dare Skywalk, in which you put on a full-body harness to go up to the roof and walk out around the golden cockerel perched above the pitch; the guardrail is on the inside! (Of course, I finally got to go in the midst of the men’s team’s worst season in about 50 years and a season of regression for the women’s team. Please get your jokes out of the way.)

I’ll touch on all three, but the most interesting and Uni Watch-adjacent was the stadium tour.

One of the first things that the tour guide pointed out was that all the fire extinguishers have chrome finishes, ostensibly to minimize the amount of visible red (rival Arsenal’s color).

After that, we saw several cases of memorabilia in an atrium. They included miniature versions of trophies the men’s team has won: the 1901 and modern men’s FA Cups, the Football League Cup, the UEFA Cup and Cup Winners’ Cup, and the old Football League Division One championship trophy. One case was devoted to Sir Alf Ramsey, the manager of England’s 1966 men’s World Cup winners who was at Tottenham during his playing days. There was also one case for different women’s team games, including a ball from their first victory over Arsenal Dec. 16, 2023. (This was the only visible sign of the women’s team I saw anywhere on either visit to the stadium besides the shirt I brought, including in the club shop and the locker rooms, which was disappointing but not entirely surprising.)

A slideshow of the cases is below.

We were taken around several seating and hospitality areas and eventually got to sit in the visitors’ locker room first, which is square-shaped and had shirts from the other Premier League clubs hanging up. Above them on shelves were several framed pennants from big games in the men’s team’s history, including, for instance, the 2019 UEFA Champions League final.

The home locker room is horseshoe-shaped and had the men’s team’s shirts hanging up.

In an open area between the locker rooms was winger Son Heung-min’s Premier League player of the month trophy from September 2023, with which we got to pose.

We also got to see the visiting, but not the home, NFL locker room, which had each team’s colored jersey and helmet hanging up and sorted by division. Its decor was fairly neutral but there were some visible Jaguars logos because they were the most recent away team at the stadium.

Towards the end of the tour, we got to walk out the tunnel and onto the side of the pitch, which is turf (can’t touch that precious Premier League grass, apparently). We also could sit in the dugouts. If you weren’t aware, soccer pitches can sometimes slope downwards from their edges, and, well, here you’d be extremely aware if you were a manager standing in their designated U-shaped box in front of their bench.

I can’t imagine how that’s comfortable.

We then went around the rooms where managers do postgame interviews as well as press conferences. In the postgame interview rooms, there are actually two corners set up with the familiar advertising backdrops, one ostensibly for the broadcaster of the match and the other for the BBC’s Match of the Day highlights show.

We could also look up and see where most of us were doing the skywalk earlier around the golden cockerel.

The skywalk is probably not great for those with fear of heights because throughout you’re harnessed to the inside railing. There’s never really any guardrails to the outside besides a safe platform on the roof where you can be unclipped and even have a drink if you feel like it.

We came back for the match on April 6 against Southampton, who are well on their way to becoming one of the worst Premier League-era English men’s top flight teams ever. This match confirmed their relegation — with seven matches left, which beat the previous record of six — and led to them firing their manager the following day. I guess that’s a hint as to how the match turned out: it threatened to be straightforward with Tottenham taking a 2-0 lead before halftime and then kind of calling off the dogs with a two-legged Europa League quarterfinal, which they won yesterday, coming up. Southampton came up with an Anschlusstreffer (a good German word meaning to reduce the deficit to one) at the end of the second half, briefly making it nervy before Tottenham won and converted a penalty in front of my face and the North Stand.

Some of us were in the North Stand in very good low-down seats, while others were in the South Stand across the way. The South Stand, as you can see, is a big one-tier stand that the club says holds 17,000 people, which by itself is more than the smallest Premier League stadiums. Those of us in the North Stand were very near the away fans’ section, which if you’re not aware is completely segregated from the rest of the stadium.

It was a very worthwhile experience at an impressive stadium which only just passed its sixth birthday shortly before the match. I’m hoping it won’t be my only visit.