First Robbie, Jenas and Huddlestone, then Defoe and now Dawson. What’s happening to the 21st century Spurs icons? Are the statues being kicked over? Are the gates on Bill Nicholson Way being stormed? Erm, not quite, not unless it’s by the High Line of Defence Brigade because it’s the proponents of that particular tactic that have expedited the end of the Spurs career of the current club captain.
Dawson’s number was up once it became fashionable to defend closer to the opponent’s goal than your own. One lapse of concentration amongst those charged with the duty of pressing means a ball over the top and a foot race between the strikers and centre backs. Dawson is quicker on the turn than me, but the likes of Aguero, Suarez, Remy and even Torres truth be told have time to check their Twitter timeline and still get to the ball first when they are up against our number 20.
The big lad joined from Forest in the same deal as Andy Reid. Like almost everyone else I’m pretty sure, I was excited by the prospect of the cunning Irish playmaker joining but had to go and do a bit of research about the ‘makeweight’ in the deal. Reid was soon moved on whilst Dawson went on to play over three hundred times and with Ledley formed as reliable a pairing in the middle as we’d had for a while.
He became the very definition of an honest trier, as close to being one of us as a boy from North Yorkshire could be. He won a poll as the ‘Spurs player you would most like to have a drink with’ to prove it. His cross-field passing became his signature move; everyone can picture that swing of his right boot in their mind’s eye and feel the tension as we wonder whether the ball is going to land perfectly in Benny or Bale’s path or in the arms of the steward in row J.
His 10 goals almost all came from set pieces of course with my personal favourite being the equaliser against Chelsea in 2006. Daws himself may prefer his sweet half volley at Villa Park in 2009. He was unfortunate to miss the Wembley league cup win in 2008, he played the following year when we fought out a stalemate with Man United and were then undone on penalties. He was injured for a while in our Champions League season but did make it back for those great games against AC Milan. He made his 4 appearances for England that season as well and was included in the squad for the World Cup in South Africa.
He’s gone though now. Not dead you understand, just moved to Hull. You’d be hard pushed to describe that as a better place, it is though somewhere he’s more likely to get a game, which to his credit, is what he wants. It’s hard not to wish him good fortune at the KC. He gave his all every time he took the field, his play and captaincy was always enthusiastic and often inspirational. Most of all though in everything he did he came across as a nice and great bloke. All the best Michael.
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