Gary Doherty: cult hero

[Gassin's finest]

Couldn't find a relevant thread, so here we are. A fun little article about our very own ginger Pele...

http://www.planetfootball.com/nosta...-cult-hero-gary-doherty-original-ginger-pele/

Conjours images of our dimmest days, and serve as a reminder as to how far we have come since.

 

[Dougal]

Wore my Ginger Pele t-shirt with pride. We have stepped up in quality over the years but we've seen a lot of better players who haven't put in the heart of GP. Thankfully now we play with heart and quality.

 

[doctor stefan Freud]

The Doherty era is best remembered as a foul mouthed rant at the television, blood pressure concerns and then the cloying, insipid release of tortured sighs like a dead monk's anus expunging its final gasses before meeting its incomprehensible maker.

Actually, it's an era best forgotten

 

[Kspur]

Never really got the cult hero thing. It basically means you're shit but not a complete penis.

 

[scat1620]

@Dougal is spot on that Doherty's spirit and commitment couldn't be questioned, even if his talent wasn't ever at the same level as his attitude. However, in a team that featured the likes of Stephen Clemence and Paolo Tramezzani etc, it always puzzles me why Doherty is the player who ends up as the cheap punchline to all our memories of the dark days of the late 90s/early 00s.

He was by far not the worst player of his era, and was a likeable character to boot. Is his infamy solely because he's a ginge?

 

[Dougal]

@Dougal is spot on that Doherty's spirit and commitment couldn't be questioned, even if his talent wasn't ever at the same level as his attitude. However, in a team that featured the likes of Stephen Clemence and Paolo Tramezzani etc, it always puzzles me why Doherty is the player who ends up as the cheap punchline to all our memories of the dark days of the late 90s/early 00s.

He was by far not the worst player of his era, and was a likeable character to boot. Is his infamy solely because he's a ginge?

That and the fact that he was asked to play in two positions. Double the flak.

 

[scat1620]

That and the fact that he was asked to play in two positions. Double the flak.

Absolutely. I watched him at Luton (my local team) before he joined us and he was always a centre-back first and foremost, and only ever an emergency striker when they had a squad decimated by injuries or wanted to chuck an extra body up front for the last 10 minutes of a game they we losing to try and shell high balls into the box. He was never ever considered a genuine dual-positioned player in his Luton days, and we at Spurs were foolish if we thought he would be anything other than the same type of player for us.

 

[gp13tot]

Gary Doherty's awesome
He's part of our back foursome
You know hes gonna score some
Gary Doherty

One of my fave spurs chants ever, first heard when he actually had a decent game away at leeds in 04.

 

[Japhet]

Dark days for the club, but Gary Doherty put a smile on our faces - bless him.

 

[Nocando]

Not sure if Tramezzani and Doc overlapped. Anyway whilst no where near the quality of today we had some reasonably talented individuals. Its just they were few and far between and at the later stages of their career and therefore not the same player / injury prone. And we didn't really have a way of putting them together; lots of square damaged and old pegs with only a few round holes. Hoddle never really developed the squad and it was massively reliant on the older injured players. Its was a complete mishmash of players with him insistant on a system that we didn't have the personnel to carry out.

Doc actually had a good career with the likes of Norwich and only really played up top when we were short. I suspect he was a Pleat suggested buy and we know he is no mug generally. He was just slow and that showed him up on quite a few occasions.

In the 2003/4 season when Pleat took over from Hoddle we had the likes of King, Kanoute, Ziege, Keane, Postiga, Poyet, Anderton, Redknapp ...even Davies and Dalmat featured.

Certainly not our finest era and I don't think any foundations or legacy was laid, in face we were moving further away from the top teams. That probably changed when Jol managed us.

Personally i preferred that time over the Graham period where I felt we played awful football.

 

[doctor stefan Freud]

Dark days for the club, but Gary Doherty put a smile on our faces - bless him.

And he'll never be as ugly as Ian Dowie

 

[mpickard2087]

Lol @ cult hero, if you wanted heart and effort you could have picked anyone out of the stands - and there were probably about 35,000 who could have done a better job than him!

Absolute footballing AIDS. A thousand years from now there still wont have been a shitter centre back partnership than Doherty/Gardner. Those were dark days :dead:

 

[Nocando]

If we are classifying things then i would say our dark days were from 1990 to 2005.

 

[doctor stefan Freud]

If we are classifying things then i would say our dark days were from 1990 to 2005.

Like a Game of Thrones winter

 

[Col_M]

I watched his debut in a friendly at Fratton Park. I knew then, he was worse than average. He was like a bull in a china shop.

 

[tony0379]

Enjoy lads.
All the legends on show here.

 

[tony0379]

 

[Wheeler Dealer]

Lol @ cult hero, if you wanted heart and effort you could have picked anyone out of the stands - and there were probably about 35,000 who could have done a better job than him!

Absolute footballing AIDS. A thousand years from now there still wont have been a shitter centre back partnership than Doherty/Gardner. Those were dark days :dead:

Kevin Scott and Colin Calderwood partnership was equally as shite..

 

[worcestersauce]

Our opinion of Gary isn't based on how good or bad he was, it is based on the fact that he never let us down in his attitude and his effort. He didn't just play striker every now and then, he was our striker for nigh on a season, he didn't ask to be but we had nobody else and he took the role on.
How many times did we sit there watching teams outplay us, God it was awful, only for him to get the ball and charge through players with bodies flying everywhere and getting nowhere but at least it got the crowd up, sometimes he even did it without the ball.