Spurs vs Forest | Moment in time | Mason's magic moment

It's approaching 10 years since 'one of our own' launched himself into becoming a first team regular with a piledriver against Nottingham Forest.

Spurs schoolboy, Academy graduate, one of our youngest debutants at 17, a first team player and captain who made 70 appearances, later our Interim Head Coach for two spells, Head of Academy Development and now Assistant Head Coach - it is, of course, Ryan Mason.

Trailing 1-0 to Forest in the third round of the League Cup at the Lane on 24 September, 2014, 'Mase' came off the bench with 65 minutes on the clock. Seven minutes later, he picked up the ball left of centre, 30 yards out, and unleashed a thunderbolt into the top corner. That sparked a recovery with his fellow Academy graduate and friend, Harry Kane and Roberto Soldado on target in a 3-1 win.

The goal was the launch pad for the midfielder’s top-flight career. Off the back of that impactful appearance, he made his Premier League debut in the north London derby three days later, a 1-1 draw, and never looked back, quickly establishing himself as a regular and important starter in Mauricio Pochettino’s early team that reached the League Cup Final in 2015 before going on to help us secure a return to Champions League football the following year. Indeed, Mase started 29 of the remaining 32 league matches.

Now an integral member of Ange Postecoglou's coaching staff, Ryan reflected on this huge personal moment a couple of years ago. “My memories of that night are obviously very fond ones,” he told us. “I spoke at the time about how I’d waited a long time for that sort of moment and you saw in the celebrations after the goal the emotion, the passion and what it meant to me, because it was a long road to that point.

“My family used to sit in that corner of White Hart Lane. I think a lot of players, when they scored, you’d see them run over to that corner because they had family members up there, so it meant a hell of a lot to me and still does. Me and Harry came on, we were 1-0 down, I scored, then I think (Roberto) Soldado scored from Andros Townsend’s shot and then Harry wrapped it up late on, so it was a positive night for us.

“Luckily for me, I kicked on from there and it was the start of a successful spell playing for the first team. I’d played 90 minutes away on the Monday night for the Under-21s, didn’t get back until 4.30 in the morning, I trained Tuesday, played Wednesday, trained Thursday, trained Friday and then played the north London derby on the Saturday.

“I think what a lot of people don’t see is the work you put in to get to that point. That season, I might have played almost 40 games in the end, so I was ready. I’d put in all the work, I’d waited for that opportunity and I took it, then furthermore I took it against Arsenal. I was starting a lot of games in the Premier League that season, so that was a very big moment for me and Forest is a club that whenever we compete against them, I’ll always have that memory in the back of my head.”