The chunky striker with a devastating burst of pace made a big impact when he joined Spurs and formed an outstanding partnership that saw the start of the 1980s become a very successful time for both Garth Crooks and Tottenham Hotspur.
Graduated as an apprentice at the Victoria Ground, spending four years in the first team squad before his goals brought him to the attention of Spurs, who bought him for a fee of £650,000 to partner him with Scot Steve Archibald in attack.
1984 - scored eight goals in eight consecutive games, a club record.
Garth was the scorer of some important goals for Tottenham, with none more so than the equalising goal at Wembley in the 1981 FA Cup Final replay, making him the first black player to score in an FA Cup Final, but perhaps more importantly were his two goals at Highbury in the semi-final replay that took Spurs to Wembley in the first place. His goal at the North Bank end saw him at his best. Playing on the shoulder of the last defender, he streaked away from him to run onto Glenn Hoddle's perfectly weighted pass and finish clinically past Paul Bradshaw.
In 1985, he scored a goal that will go down in Spurs history as, at Anfield on 16th March, he poached the only goal in a win that was the club's first at Liverpool's ground since 1912.
During his playing years, Garth took the concerns of players seriously and he became the first black chairman of the PFA in 1988 and continued after he was forced to retire from playing football through injury in 1990.
Crooksy was awarded an OBE in Queen's Birthday Honours list in 1999 for services to football and he served as Chairman of the Football Foundation's grassroots advisory group, as a special advisor on football to the Commission for Racial Equality and a committee member of the Independent Football Commission.
His talk and music show on Greater London Radio, "Garth Crooks in Conversation", was widely praised and won a Sony Award in 1999-2000, as he showed his flair for interviewing and intelligent conversation.
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Garth has worked for the BBC since 1982 as a match analyst and also as an interviewer, noted for his wordy and rambling questions, which have been much parodied. Seen frequently on BBC's Saturday afternoon football programme "Final Score" and he has been comically lampooned for his rambling questions to football players and managers.