‘He peppered me’: How Tottenham stint, Harry Kane shaped Tom Glover’s approach to football, life

They think and react differently, notably for the fact that if a goalkeeper makes a mistake, it is harder to mask than a feather boa on a nun.

Tom Glover knows this, and is OK with it.

Melbourne City’s goalkeeper is a decade into a career that is going in the right direction.

Yes, a bucket last December to the head is part of Glover’s story. We’ll get to that, but there is so much more to the towering redhead’s football journey than one horrible flash in time.

That moment is being treated like any other downside to being a goalkeeper. It happened, it has to be forgotten. Glover has worked seriously on his craft for a decade, and become seriously good by moments left in the past.

Like moving to London as a 14-year-old. Dealing with Harry Kane and a coach who demanded perfection in the same manner of Terence Fletcher, the drum teacher in the movie Whiplash who ruthlessly demanded the best, all day, every day. Or else.

Those tests, and coming through them, mean more than anything that has been chucked Glover’s way.

*****

Glover’s resilience stocks are plentiful. He had no idea he’d need as much when first picking up gloves as a 10-year-old in Sydney’s south.

So smoothly did he take to football’s quirkiest position, four short years later Glover was identified by Tottenham, and signed to a youth deal.

Mum Nicole went with him to London for the first week, then left Tom to find his own way. He got homesick. He wanted to tap out. Mum told him to sip on some concrete and harden up.

Glover knuckled down and by the age of 17 was training with Spurs’ first team, where goalkeeping coach Toni Jimenez demanded perfection. When Glover fell short, sessions doubled as lessons in Spanish swear words.

“He tested me, and my character,” Glover recalls of Jimenez.

“He wanted perfection, didn’t speak much English, translation a bit hard. I copped it, but he meant it because he wanted me to do well. Made me struggle, that’s for sure.

“When you’re young like I was, you think you are being picked on, but it’s made me stronger now. Had to go with the sponge mentality. Great experience.”

Glover also got a close look at greatness. Harry Kane would regularly ask the younger keepers to stay after training so he could work on his finishing.

“He peppered me, and you walk off the pitch very low on confidence because you only save about one in fifty balls,” Glover says of Kane, who on last check had scored 213 Premier League goals.

“Left foot, right foot, different angles, and scenarios. He wouldn’t go inside until he got it right once, but fifteen times. He’s the definition of hard work paying off.”

*****

Glover came back to Australia in 2017, sent on loan by Spurs to Central Coast Mariners for some first team football.

This was when the Mariners, put simply, sucked.

Glover’s professional debut came in the Mariners’ first game that season, a 5-1 smashing from Newcastle. Glover played three more games, hurt his shoulder then couldn’t get back in the side. He was stuck behind replacement Ben Kennedy, even as the Mariners hurtled toward another wooden spoon.

“It didn’t pan out the way I wanted,” Glover recalls with a healthy dollop of understatement.

“I was a young kid, wanting to be playing week in week out. Now you look back how you deal with things, you probably would change.”

Still, it was a worthy lesson. The next season, still under contract from Spurs, Glover headed on loan to Sweden, loving the experience of living away from home again, and immersing himself in another culture.

After the Spurs contract ended, the need for games became clearer. It was time to build a career. He returned to Australia, for a chance with Melbourne City.

Some 100 games later, he has more than taken that chance.

An instant is all it took to nearly end it all. December 17, AAMI Park. The Melbourne derby riot, with 150 fooligans storming the pitch to go at Glover for flicking a smoke flare in their direction.

A bucket full of sand hit Glover, delivering one hell of a gut punch to football on the same weekend of the World Cup final.

Glover spent the night in hospital as the game felt like it was on life support. His superficial wound healed quickly, and his mentality made the next step pretty simple.

“I left that in the past and moved on pretty quick,” Glover recalls.

“It didn’t hinder me at all, the best thing was for me to go out the next week and play, funnily enough against the Mariners.”

He played and kept a clean sheet, just ten days after the derby. He was instantly more recognisable, from the local coffee shop and beyond. All of it, irrelevant.

“Made me stronger, just wanted to go about my business, head down and get back to work.

Not pretend like it didn’t happen, but it was just getting back to normal as soon as possible.”

*****

Of more importance to Glover is where his head was at six months beforehand. His mind was mush after finishing an underwhelming 2021/22 season with Melbourne City, making noticeable, uncharacteristic mistakes.

“I was well off the pace,” Glover admits.

“Again, football is not all highs, there’s lows as well and it’s how you deal with it.”

There was worry. It’s not as if Glover was ripping up Melbourne’s nightspots, like a young twenty-something might be expected to do in his spare time.

He was working hard. Just, nothing was working.

“Some of my performances probably looked like I was on the piss!” Glover laughs.

“A few questionable moments, but you have to taste the sours to get the sweets.”

And the sweets have gradually come this season, getting better in big games. Notably against Sydney FC in the first leg of their semi-final two weeks ago, Glover saved a shot from Robert Mak he had no right to save.

“I’m pretty strong mentally, and showed it by bouncing back this season,” the gloveman says.

“It’s the basics, the easy stuff right. Those saves aren’t just a one off, it comes down to plenty of repetition.”

After Saturday night’s grand final, Glover is a free agent.

He can go anywhere in the world. Options are plentiful.

While notoriety may follow him outside the football sphere in Australia, prospective clubs will only care about the football. What he can do and what he can cope with, like being castigated by goalkeeper coaches seeking perfection.

And those clubs will want to know what type of character he is, and how much he wants it. Harry Kane gave him that lesson.

More Coverage

Life of Brian: From sellotape and a cyclone to Mariners miracle

Tim Elbra

You never know, he might end up on a pitch with the England captain in the future.

“On his team or against, that’s what I’m working towards,” Glover says.

“The dream is to get back there … playing at the highest level in Europe and being involved in that Socceroos set up.”