Tottenham On This Day: Roger Morgan Makes His Spurs Debut
By Logan Holmes
Roger Morgan made his Tottenham debut against his former club, Queen’s Park Rangers at Loftus Road with his identical twin, Ian, in the Rangers team.
15th February, 1969
Queens Park Rangers 1 Tottenham Hotspur 1 1st Division
Scorer: Greaves
Team: Jennings; Beal, Knowles; Mullery, England, Collins; Pearce, Greaves, Jenkins, Venables, Morgan
The most notable fact from this match was that the Morgan twins, Ian and Roger, who had been part of the Queen’s Park Rangers success story of previous years and had helped Rangers gain promotion to the 1st Division were on opposite sides.
Identical twins, Ian and Roger Morgan had played all their football together but earlier in the month Spurs had signed Roger a left winger from Rangers for £110,000, equaling the highest cash transfer fee between English clubs.
At the end of January Spurs had defeated Rangers at White Hart Lane in a game re-arranged from November because of heavy rain. After signing, Roger Morgan had been unable to play in Spurs next match as he was cup-tied so his debut was at Loftus Road against his former club and facing his twin brother.
The match was close and finished all square with the Tottenham goal being scored by Jimmy Greaves, his 30th of the season.
Morgan was unfortunate that his time at Tottenham was blighted by injury. He was a regular in the team but early in the 1970-71 season he was injured in the 3rd Round League Cup tie against Sheffield United. He had played and scored in the previous round against Swansea City but his injury saw him miss out on a trip to Wembley and kept him out for over a year. He didn’t return to the first team until January, 1972 but he never fully recovered his fitness and it led to his eventual retirement in the summer of 1973. He made 80 League and Cup appearances for Spurs and scored 12 goals.