Growing up in England you are surrounded by football. And when you grow up in London you are enveloped by it.

The capital has some 15 clubs of varying status (if we include Watford) in specific locales all with a different character, image and record of achievements, so you can't say you aren't spoilt for choice.

I think much of it depends on whether you come from a family that has an allegiance to one club or another.

My dad was an immigrant from Ireland who had lived in many parts of the city before marrying and settling in North West London. He didn't really have a tie to one particular club, at least on a geographical basis

In fact, one of his fondest memories, he used to tell me, was living in Notting Hill and watching Chelsea the season they won their first (and until 2004, their only) championship, in 1954.

But having made his home in North London he looked to the big two clubs in that half of the city - Arsenal and Tottenham - and began to take me to games at Highbury and White Hart Lane on a Saturday afternoon in the mid 1960s.

As an Irishman in the building industry there was a lot of pressure, I imagine, to support the Gunners. After all, Islington and its surrounds in those days was not the gentrified enclave it is now. Back then it was full of working-class people.

Murphys, the big Irish-owned building company, was based there, ensuring a ready affiliation for Arsenal among the large Irish population that eventually bought he big, old run-down houses and thronged the pubs in the area.

Maybe it's because Tottenham were known back then as the Lilywhites that dad bucked the trend and went for Spurs. His home county in Ireland, Kildare, also wore white shirts and bore the same nickname, so there was a certain synergy to his choice. And he never minded being a contrarian.

And so it was that I became a Spurs fan; to this day my now 84-year-old dad swears he still used to occasionally take me and my second brother to Highbury - he was really a football fan first and foremost rather than a rusted-on supporter - but neither of us has much recollection. It's as if it's a repressed memory that we continue to block out.

One of my first really great Tottenham memories was winning the FA Cup in 1967, beating Chelsea 2-1 in the first all London Cup final. I was a 10-year-old, and I vividly remember winger Jimmy Robertson firing us into the lead shortly before half-time, although recollection of Frank Saul's bundled second in the 67th minute is less clear. When Bobby Tambling got one for the Blues five minutes from time it was a mere consolation.

As we age it is the stars of our youth who loom largest in the memory. Sport and life was simpler then, and as a youngster the stars appear to be giants, both literally and metaphorically.

That was a great era to be a Spurs fan. Under Bill Nicholson, Tottenham had become the first team to do the double (win the Cup and the League) in the 20th century, in the 1960-61 season, and Spurs were the glamour team of the competition in the 1960s, attracting great players such as England legend Jimmy Greaves, Scotland captain Dave McKay, Wales captain Mike England, Scottish international Alan Gilzean, that wonderful Irish goalkeeper Pat Jennings and two England midfielders, Alan Mullery and Terry Venables.

We still haven't won the league since the Glory Glory team led by captain Danny Blanchflower did so in 1961,  but there have been plenty of marvellous memories nonetheless.

Tottenham were the first English club to win a European trophy (the Cup Winners Cup in 1963, smashing Atletico Madrid 5-1 in the final) and became the first English side to win two European competitions, beating Wolves, of all teams, in the final of the 1972 UEFA Cup.

There were FA Cup successes on a regular basis (the old joke was that if the year ended in a 1 then Spurs would win the Cup, having done so in 1901, 1921, 1961, 1981 and 1991) and a second UEFA Cup triumph in 1984.

I was never what you might call a fanatic, always turning up at the Park Lane End or The Shelf. I missed more games than I attended,  especially when I went off to University in Birmingham in the late 1970s.

But even then I would always check Tottenham's results first in the paper, and whenever they were in the vicinity playing Wolves, Villa, West Brom, Birmingham or Coventry would try to get along to see a team that by then featured the burgeoning talents of Glenn Hoddle and the mercurial skills of Ossie Ardiles.

Back then football wasn't the mega media business it is now. Tickets were easier to come by but sometimes life got in the way, it wasn't always possible to get to a game but your mates understood.

I suppose it wasn't until I left England and came to Australia in 1987 that I realised how much Tottenham had insinuated itself into my make up. I'd had spells when I watched the likes of Fulham if it was easier to get to Craven Cottage,  and there was  a season as a schoolboy when I often accompanied a classmate, a mad West Ham fan, to Upton Park.

But when I moved to the other side of the earth and realised I couldn't see Spurs when I wanted I remembered how much I had enjoyed it all, that sense of community  with the crowd as you sang the songs and all willed the same result.

As the song says, you don't know what you've got till it's gone.

I've watched Tottenham from afar for nearly 30 years, delighted at our successes, felt deflated by the disappointments, but all the while hoping they succeed.

So to get the chance to see them in Sydney this weekend is tremendous. Here's hoping they do to Graham Arnold's team what Melbourne Victory did just a few weeks ago ...