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FROM THE ARCHIVES
After beating Dutch league winners Feyenoord in our first
game, thanks to goals from Terry Medwin and Les Allen, we
travelled by coach to Amsterdam via the Hook of Holland and
The Hague.
We faced a Combined Amsterdam XI at the Olympic
Stadium on 17 May and as we took to the field, were greeted
over the loudspeakers with the song 'Tip-Top Tottenham
Hotspur' - then-recently recorded for our FA Cup Final trip to
Wembley!
The hosts, containing a number of international players,
started brightly but we grabbed the lead shortly before the
interval through John White. After the break, we dominated
the game and added to our tally with goals from Terry Dyson
and Allen to finish the incredible 1960/61 season on a high.
Our team against the Amsterdam XI was:
Brown, Baker, Henry, Blanchflower, Norman, Marchi, Medwin,
White, Saul, Allen, Dyson.
Four years later, we returned to the Netherlands for a two-
match tour, with our first game against Amsterdam side
DWS Club on 18 May, 1965, which we lost 1-0.
At the time, they were one of the top clubs in the country,
won the Eredivisie in 1964 having only been promoted to
the top flight the previous season, and reached the quarter
finals of the European Cup in 1964/65. But that was the
peak of their success and these days, DWS are an amateur
club which play in the fourth tier of Dutch football.
Our team against DWS was: Jennings, Norman, Henry,
Mullery, Brown, Clayton, Robertson, Saul, Mackay (Low),
Gilzean, Jones.
We beat Telstar Club 3-2 four days later in Ijmuiden,
thanks to goals from Frank Saul and Cliff Jones (2).
The first time we actually played Ajax was in a pre-season
friendly in Amsterdam ahead of the 1973/74 campaign.
Once again, the game was staged at the Olympic Stadium
in the Dutch city in front of a crowd of 65,000 for what was
the last-ever game in an Ajax shirt for their club legend
Sjaak Swart.
European Cup holders at the time, Ajax were in their
prime and featured the likes of Johan Cruyff, Arie Haan,
Ruud Krol and Johan Neeskens in their side. In fact, it was
one of Cruyff's last games in his first spell at the club as he
left for Barcelona a couple of weeks later, although he did
return to Ajax in 1980.
This was our first full-scale match of pre-season and it
showed, as we were well-beaten by the Dutch giants. We
were 3-0 down after just seven minutes, Neeskens scoring
the first before Cruyff netted twice in a minute. Neeskens
OFFICIAL MATCHDAY PROGRAMME
