It has been a busy first couple of days in Australia for Tottenham Hotspur as all the noise has centred mainly around two men.
The team flew in late on Saturday night for the first leg of their tour in Perth. You might be forgiven for wondering why Spurs would visit a place known as one of the world's most remote cities. For the closest city with more than 100,000 residents to Perth, home to more than two million people itself, is Adelaide, which is more than 1,300 miles away.
When you fly across Australia at night it's just darkness below as you cross thousands of miles of outback. For context, Sydney is 2,045 miles away from Perth. It's closer and cheaper to fly to some other countries for the people of Perth than it is to travel across their own land.
Yet it's easy to see why Perth has attracted Tottenham from 9,000 miles away as there's a healthy fanbase in the city and the Ange Postecoglou factor will only swell that. In an open training session at the WACA Ground on Monday evening, Spurs sold out their allocated 6,000 tickets for the event and could have sold far, far more. Two enthusiastic 15-year-old fans queued outside the cricket stadium from seven hours before training began to ensure they got a good spot.
The WACA was also the scene of Spurs' first morning in the city on Sunday as they received a traditional welcome on the vast cricket pitch in a ceremony intended to offer them safe passage and protection of their spiritual being during their journey. The players watched in a circle, along with club staff including chairman Daniel Levy and Postecoglou, as the welcoming committee performed a ceremonial dance in front of them and encouraging them to clap in time at one point, a new sight and experience for some of
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