“They’re fucking celebrating,” a Tamworth fan muttered in disbelief as Dejan Kulusevski slammed in Tottenham’s game-sealing second goal. And on an afternoon of little victories for Tamworth, here was another: one of Europe’s best forwards coming off the bench in extra time to secure a win against the 108th-ranked team in England, knackered after 106 minutes of football. The keeper Kulusevski scored past, Jas Singh, is a building surveyor.

Two-nil, was it, in the end? Three? Maybe Brennan Johnson got one near the end. With the press box overflowing, your correspondent was marooned near the back of the main stand, where the view was patchy but the vibes were immaculate, and the corrugated iron roof was taking an absolute battering. Above all, there was the refreshing sensation of these vastly different worlds moving briefly into alignment.

There’s Dan Creaney, a builder and bricklayer. There’s Tom McGlinchey, a PhD student and lecturer at Nottingham Trent University. There’s Nathan Tshikuna, a provider of after-school clubs and part-time rapper. Meanwhile there’s Son Heung-min, a footballer. Dominic Solanke, a footballer. Timo Werner, a footballer, I guess. But for a flick of fate, a couple of choices, an injury at the wrong age, they could easily have been in each other’s shoes. And for more than 100 minutes, on the fake grass of Staffordshire, there was nothing to separate them.

Just as things were threatening to get seriously unpleasant for the Premier League guests, Pedro Porro popped up with a smart low free-kick, Johnson put the ball across the goalmouth and Tshikuna bundled the ball in with his knee: a non-league goal to beat the non-league club. Tamworth had emptied their tank, Kulusevski and Johnson added the richly undeserved extras, and Ange Postecoglou’s side could escape back to the metropole, albeit not without a few ringing eardrums and frostbitten fingers.

All the ingredients for an ambush had been left carefully in place. An icily treacherous 3G pitch. An away dressing room with one bench, no central heating and six showers, although the stadium manager Andy Jones had warned them not to try using all six at the same time. And a gleefully disdainful home crowd, who made up in salt and shade what they lacked in brute numbers.

“Shit Cole Palmer,” they chided James Maddison, who had a largely forgettable game. “Big Aussie knobhead, getting sacked in the morning,” they greeted Postecoglou as he took his seat on the Spurs bench. Werner was serenaded with a chant of “sausage jockey” and the odd reference to Germany’s National Socialist government of the 1930s and 1940s. Magic of the cup, pure romance and all that.

The first Tommy Tonks long throw arrived about five minutes into the game. Tonks is one of those folk heroes you only really get in non-league football these days: a sandwich-van operator during the week, a long-throw berserker at weekends. The crowd beat out a low tribal rhythm. The ITV cameraman perched alongside him for the close-up. Tonks took a few steps, ran, threw. The throw was headed away.

Most of the time, it was weirdly quiet. Very quickly the game fell into a kind of tame holding pattern. Chances were few at both ends. Admittedly there was very little on the pitch to get the pulse racing, as Tottenham passed the ball harmlessly among themselves and Tamworth availed themselves of the long lump up the channel whenever the opportunity arose.

But perhaps when you have hiked your regular ticket prices from £18 to £38 for adults, from £5 to £29 for kids under 10, perhaps you subtly shift the motives of the people watching you. They are no longer your base, your loyal hardcore regulars. Now they are consumers, customers, cultural tourists lining up for The Tamworth FA Cup Experience. At the edge of the pitch, near the new fan zone, a freshly installed digital hoarding scrolled with adverts for crypto coin, betting companies, The Sun.

Spurs were pretty bad, albeit not in a way that feels especially interesting or novel. The blandness of their second-string team is hardly news when injuries have basically forced them to play with a second string for weeks. An extra 30 minutes in their legs: not ideal, but at least the experience of facing a cynical, physical low-block team will stand them in good stead for the north London derby on Wednesday. And for all the derision and debasement, the ignominy of trying to shield the ball in the corner against non-league opposition late on, they still have three shots at a trophy this season.

As for Tamworth, not so much a giantkilling as a giant-hazing: a reminder of what this team can do when they defend as a unit, a handy confidence boost as they try to stay in a National League where they are one of the few remaining part-time clubs. The money will help, of course. But the memories will last longer still.