Geoff Shreeves was pleased to see common sense and decency prevail when Spurs met Pompey.
Fans show common sense, and football is the winner
Tottenham won on Sunday. So too did Portsmouth.
Now before you start thinking that I really have lost it let me clarify that. Both clubs won off the pitch not on it.
The build up to the game was fairly straightforward as far as a small number of supporters from either camp were concerned. Never mind that we are scrapping for our Premier League lives, let's vent our spleen and focus all of our energy on former employees of our chosen team seemed to be the line of thinking, if you can call that thinking.
Having then identified said former workers, why don't we then insult them to the maximum degree possible scraping the depths of character assassination with absolutely no humour and even less reason was the reckoning.
What happened next? Nothing. Not a word out of place, no despicable chants and certainly zero crossing of the line with homophobic ditties.
If I'm honest I was taken aback by the total success of the co-ordinated crowd operation which was mounted by the clubs, stewards, police and managers. Sure Sol Campbell got booed every time he touched the ball but he would admit that's fair game. There's stick and there's sick.
What would be really interesting to know would be why the potential louts behaved themselves? Was it the high-profile good behaviour campaign, the very real threat of arrest or perhaps the realisation of going too far?
I really do hope it was the latter because if any fans had been privy to what I saw in the tunnel pre-match they would have realised where the line is drawn.
Friends
Every member of Portsmouth's backroom staff greeted Harry, Joe Jordan and Kevin Bond like long lost friends.
The Spurs coaching staff who had only so recently been in the dugout at Fratton Park week in week out, in turn embraced David James, Sol Campbell and Peter Crouch with the sort of affection that can only be afforded to brothers in arms. This is where the paradox lay.
The misguided fans wanted to make this personal, for the players it was anything but.
At the end of the game David James and Jermain Defoe were only too happy to be interviewed together despite having spent the previous hour-and-a-half trying to inflict maximum damage possible points wise on each other.
When a point lifts you out of the bottom three you have to be happy but Harry was far from it when he rued Darren Bent' spurning of a golden chance to win the game.
Rued? Rude more like it but that's a different story off camera.
As for Tony Adams, having lost their previous four games and never in history won a Premier League game at The Lane, he was beaming.
Pompey and Spurs moved significantly up the table, we saw a really entertaining game with common sense and decency prevailing all around.
Tottenham 1 Portsmouth 1 was the scoreline but football was the winner.
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