Heartbreak of a hero: The tragic death of his brother rocked his family but Townsend fought through the grief to become an England star

For a player whose whippet speed is one of his standout attributes, it seems apt that Andros Townsend grew up within the shadow of Walthamstow greyhound stadium.
On Friday, the 22-year-old Tottenham forward will play on the wing for England and earn his third cap - a remarkable rise given the nine loan spells to his name and the ban he served for FA betting offences last summer.

His sizzling goal in the World Cup qualifier against Montenegro on his debut last month — a rasping shot from outside the area - excited a nation and saw him burst suddenly into the international limelight.

Arrived: Andros Townsend burst onto the international scene after scoring for England against Montenegro

Those who knew Townsend as a boy speak of a determined character with a burning desire to succeed at the highest level. They, too, were surprised by the nature of his emergence. From a young age, it was clear Andros had the requisite  talent and drive, but his young career has also featured professional and personal setbacks.

Townsend draws paternal heritage from Jamaica and maternal  heritage from Cyprus but his is a story of homegrown English attainment in the face of multi-million pound imports.

Supported every step of the way by parents Troy, the coach and Kick It Out campaigner, and Katerina, who would drive her son and his four siblings everywhere, Townsend has been able to fulfil his potential. He is a first choice on the wing for Tottenham, keeping £30million Erik Lamela out of the side, and has broken through with England.

Close: Townsend pictured with his father Troy who is a coach and Kick It Out campaigner

First-choice: Andros Townsend's early season form has seen him kep Erik Lamela (right) out of the Spurs team

‘He was always very positive, Andros, very strong-willed,’ recalls Roger Miller, the youth coach at Spurs who spotted him in the late 1990s playing for the Under 8s of Ridgeway Rovers — the local club with David Beckham as a famous graduate.
‘They won 6-1 and Andros got two goals. Out of all the boys he was the quickest. Also, he believed in himself more than the others and never took a backward step.
‘He wanted to be No 1, never happy at being No 2. Not arrogant, that’s the wrong word. He didn’t pass the ball - he just wanted to score goals. Andros played as a No 9 through the middle at the time. He was very frail but Spurs take smaller boys.’

Focused: Former youth coach Roger Miller says Townsend had great self-belief and just wanted to score goals

After the match, however, Miller was to receive some bad news - Andros was already training with Arsenal. ‘Later, I spoke to his mother and got on very well with her,’ adds 68-year-old Miller. ‘She was happy to bring him to Spurs as well but I said I didn’t want to kill him with too much training. Next thing I know he’s left Arsenal and come in.’

Being a Tottenham fan, like his father, had sealed the deal for Andros.

 The Townsend family home is on a quiet residential street just off the busy North Circular Road. A small front patio with shrubs, a gate, and a 2ft-high brick wall tell you that the Townsend family have not let Andros’ recent rise in fortunes change them. Hale End Sportsground is easily seen from the window of the well-presented terraced house. It was on this field that the young Andros  would play after school with his friends.

Boyhood Spurs fan: Townsend stopped training with Arsenal as a youngster in order to play at Tottenham

On Saturday mornings he would go for Greek lessons at his secondary school, Rush Croft Sports  College, at the behest of his mother. 

Townsend’s paternal grandparents, Mabel and Lloyd, lived in a small terrace house in Hackney, east London, where Troy grew up, after leaving Jamaica for Britain in the early 1960s as part of the ‘Windrush’ era of mass immigration. Lloyd worked as a labourer.

Townsend’s local community is a tight-knit, working class area that friends say the Premier League star has not forgotten. He visited nearby Thorpe Hall Primary to deliver a coaching session with his dad in 2009.

Townsend’s football tutelage started in his infancy and was partly guided by big brother Kurtis, Troy’s first-born son to his previous partner Maria.

Kurtis died aged 18 in a car accident on December 15, 2001 while being driven with three team-mates to a game for Cheshunt FC, the side Troy managed at the time.

Kurtis Townsend was just 18 when he was killed in a car crash on the way to a football match

The match at Barton Rovers, near Luton, kicked off in the belief that the four young men were merely running late and would join the action late. Cheshunt only had 10 men and Troy was on the touchline.

Increasingly frantic calls were made by those at the ground to establish their whereabouts but only at full time did police arrive to deliver the terrible news.
Kurtis, who was sitting in the back, was dead, his team-mates survived. A sign of the family’s standing in the community can be gauged by the hundreds who turned up to the funeral. 

Kurtis was born on August 28, the same date as their younger sister Nadine, so happiness is every year tinged with sadness on her birthday.

A stand at Cheshunt’s Theobalds Lane stadium is named after  Kurtis, who had attended Wimbledon’s academy, and two years ago a memorial match was organised there to mark the 10th anniversary of his death. 

That same night Townsend pointed to the skies in tribute after he scored for Tottenham in a Europa League match away to Shamrock Rovers in Dublin. 

‘To score that goal, and produce that performance, 10 years to the day Kurtis died is something I’ll never forget,’ Townsend has said. ‘Kurtis would’ve been looking down and smiling.’

Tribute: Townsend points to the skies following his goal against Shamrock Rovers in the Europa League

Ian Marshall, Ridgeway’s current chairman, played pub football with Troy in the early nineties and offers an indication of the brothers’ relationship. 

‘Troy used to bring Andros and Kurtis, and they would have a kick-about with us before a game,’ says Marshall. ‘Andros was about three or four at the time. 

Even though he was very young you could see he had a bit of a touch on him and could still kick it. I think he learned the ropes a bit quicker off his older brother, who was a good player.’

School friend Drew Barber, 22, tells a similar tale: ‘I played with him from year seven through to year 11 at Rushcroft. He was good at loads of sports: table tennis, basketball, athletics, football. We would play basketball in the playground and if you beat him at a game he’d get quite angry. He’s really competitive, but in a good way.

Future star: Townsend pictured on England Under 16 duty back in 2006

‘We would go to Hale End and have a good kick-around. Sometimes he would leave halfway through to go training. He was dedicated. He was careful with what he ate and drank and did a lot of exercises.’

Despite Townsend’s recent increase from his £5,000 weekly wages to £15,000, Barber insists it has not gone to his head.

‘I see him in the street now and he’s a nice guy, really humble. It doesn’t seem to me that the fame has hit him hard.’ 

There were times, though, when Townsend’s feisty attitude spilled over into tempers that required intervention at school.
‘He was a very competitive young man,’ recalls Barbara Miller, behaviour supervisor at Rushcroft. ‘He didn’t like losing at anything. He needed to win and if he didn’t, we knew about it. If someone beat him at 100 metres he would ask for a re-run.

Level-headed: Townsend is mobbed by his team-mates following his goal against Aston Villa in October

‘He wasn’t one that shone academically, his focus was always on the sporty side.’
That was the case when Townsend was briefly released by Spurs at 14. But two days later he was back after club staff met with his parents and realised it was the wrong decision.


At Tottenham he has been known to stop training temporarily to question coaches, particularly when the drill has not been specifically designed to benefit him. Some like that, some don’t. What cannot be denied is the single-mindedness for someone so young.

Quick feet: Townsend honed his skills as a youngster

The skills being seen this season were already taking shape when he played  on an indoor pitch next to White Hart Lane in those first coaching  sessions under Miller, through the loan spells all over England, and on to the Wembley turf.
As an eight-year-old he would twice a week be driven by Katerina, known as Nina, to north London to play on a green carpet in an 80ft by 40ft room with concrete walls. The building, which was adjacent to the  stadium, has since been demolished.
‘The ball was never out of play,’ says Miller. ‘Street football I called it, no bibs. It was high tempo, the boys loved it. It allowed them to get their head up to find their player. Then we would go into technical training.’
Alex Inglethorpe can take great credit for Townsend’s development. He was Spurs youth team coach before moving to Liverpool as reserve team manager.
‘He’s unpredictable, and that’s one of his strengths. He’s a risk taker,’ Inglethorpe says. ‘He has worked hard to be able to play equally well on both wings.
‘In the last three months of his scholarship he was going past defenders too easily and that’s when we realised he was ready for the next step.

‘He is learning to be more  consistent, because that’s what the Premier League demands. He wants to be more effective, to score more goals and make more assists to be a more rounded player.’


Terry Skiverton took Townsend on loan from Harry Redknapp in March 2009 and handed the  17-year-old his League debut for Yeovil in March 2009.  

‘He had to look after himself and be away from his family for the first time,’ Skiverton, now assistant manager, remembers. ‘It wasn’t just a football experience, it was a coming of age experience. He really bought into it and was not a prima donna.

New experience: Former Yeovil manager Terry Skiverton (right) took Townsend on loan in March 2009

‘His father used to come down for every game home and away. Troy wasn’t a shrinking violet, when Andros didn’t play well he told him. He wasn’t one of these parents on X Factor who think their kid is unbelievable when they are not great.

‘Andros is really mentally strong. He was very good at playing the game and not the occasion. Everything I have noticed with him during his progression is his lack of fear. Sometimes players get that. He is a really fearless character. He will sprint full speed with the ball at his feet, trying to take people on.’

His last loan spell - at QPR - led to England Under 21 recognition before his trip to the European Championship last summer was cancelled after he broke FA rules by betting on games and was handed a four-month ban.

Impressive: Townsend received plaudits for his performances for Queens Park Rangers last season

Townsend took his punishment on the chin and his form on the football pitch has convinced Andre-Villas Boas to give him a run at Tottenham.
Townsend has taken his opportunity and flourished, culminating in his strike at Wembley.Miller adds: ‘Roy Hodgson has taken a gamble and it paid off.’
Incredibly, Townsend became embroiled in controversy again when he was the subject of Hodgson’s ‘feed the monkey’ comments at half-time during last month’s Poland match.
Now, Townsend must live with the expectation that his performances had built. He is the type of player who spreads excitement through the watching tens of thousands.
England expects; can Townsend continue to deliver?
Additional reporting: Ryan Kisiel

TOWNSEND'S LIFE ON LOAN

Before breaking through with Tottenham and England, Andros Townsend went on loan to nine different clubs.

 

YEOVIL TOWN
2008-09    Apps: 10      Goals: 1
Townsend’s first taste of league football came at Yeovil, where he helped the club avoid relegation from League One.

 

LEYTON ORIENT
2009-10    Apps: 26      Goals: 2
The winger spent the first half of the season in east London with Orient, even scoring against his former loan club Yeovil.

 

MK DONS
2009-10    Apps: 9      Goals: 2
Townsend impressed MK Dons boss Paul Ince but was recalled by Tottenham manager Harry Redknapp in March 2010. He made the Spurs bench four times towards the end of the season.

 

IPSWICH
2010-11    Apps: 16      Goals: 1
After several appearances for Spurs in pre-season, Townsend moved to Ipswich. He returned to Tottenham in January 2011 to make a goalscoring debut before moving on again.

 

WATFORD
2010-11    Apps: 3      Goals: 0
His move to Watford was supposed to last until the end of the season but was cut short after just three games.

 

MILLWALL
2010-11    Apps: 11      Goals: 2
After his unsuccessful spell at Watford, Townsend moved to the Den, helping Millwall move up from 12th in the Championship to ninth by the end of the season.

 

LEEDS
2011-12    Apps: 7      Goals: 1
Townsend had played for Spurs in the Europa League and Carling Cup before joining Leeds in January, but was unhappy and soon left.

 

BIRMINGHAM
2011-12    Apps: 16      Goals: 0
The winger joined Birmingham just a day after leaving Leeds and helped them reach the Championship play-offs.

 

QPR
2012-13    Apps: 12      Goals: 2
After 10 more Spurs appearances, Townsend linked up with former manager Harry Redknapp. He impressed, but QPR went down.