Spurs stories | Off The Shelf | Paul Robinson on meeting his hero and Everton legend - on the day he signed for Spurs!
Wed 21 August 2024, 17:00|
Tottenham Hotspur
The first series of our official podcast Off The Shelf delivered a library's worth of Spurs stories from legends of our Club. In this series, we've returned to those 30 episodes to bring you some of those stories as our legends told us - their Spurs life in their words.
In the latest story from the series - and with our first home game of the 2024/25 Premier League campaign against Everton on the horizon (Saturday, 3pm UK) - we go back to Episode 14 with Paul Robinson, League Cup winner in 2008, fans' favourite and a goalkeeper whose performances in a Spurs shirt saw him installed quickly as England's number one.
Football fate certainly smiled on Robbo on the day he signed in May, 2004 - he told us how he met his football idol, Neville Southall, at White Hart Lane as he conducted his official photoshoot!
Southall was at Everton for 17 years, 1981-1998, and won two titles, two FA Cups and the European Cup Winners’ Cup during his time at Goodison. He was also capped 92 times by Wales.
Here's how it all played out...
Paul Robinson | Off The Shelf, EP. 14
175 appearances, 2004-2008
"It was the proper new signing photoshoot, you know, holding your shirt up on the pitch at White Hart Lane, and Neville was there! He works closely with different charities and he was there at White Hart Lane, taking a group of his kids around on a stadium tour. So, they're visiting, and I'm like, 'wow, it's Neville Southall'! I stopped the photoshoot and I went to talk to him. All the kids were like, 'oh, it's Paul Robinson, he's just signed from Leeds, it's Tottenham's new signing'. They all wanted to talk to me, and they had absolutely no idea what Neville did because he's so unassuming, so humble, he obviously doesn't sit there and tell these kids or the people that he works with what he used to do, one of the greats of the game, they had no interest or knew very little about him, and all I wanted to do was speak to him! He signed the shirt I was holding on the pitch, he signed it for me, and I've still got it to this day.”
