New Journal reporter Dan Carrier with Harry Kane – the striker scored his 267th goal for Spurs against Man City

THE ball dropped into his path, and, 15 yards from goal, Harry Kane’s body shape was set.

Anyone who has watched Tottenham regularly for the past decade took a deep breath.

The collective intake held for an explosive split second while the footballer’s brain sent a message to his right boot: then the eruption of joy.

Kane’s match-winning goal against Manchester City on Sunday was the 267th time the striker has hit the back of the net in a Cockerel-emblazoned shirt, and was the one to make him the club’s all-time record scorer.

It was a special moment for everyone connected to Spurs, made more so by the fact Kane’s career has been littered with so many near-misses: too many semi-final defeats to recount, that season we watched Leicester City win the Premier League knowing it could have been us.

Then there was “The Case of Sissoko’s Shoulder”. Minutes into the Champions League final against Liverpool in 2019, Moussa Sissoko sticks out an arm to direct a teammate, the ball brushes against it and the referee points to the spot: the game is lost.

Arguably the most complete centre-forward of the modern Premier League era does not have a cabinet full of winner’s medals. But Kane has achieved something rarer, and is guaranteed a place in the club’s hall of fame. As long as there is a Tottenham Hotspur Football Club, his name will be remembered.

Kane deserves this. He has kept the club in the upper echelons of the table, and his Champions League-qualifying goals have helped pay for the new stadium.

One can only imagine the inner exasperation at the poor recruitment policy throughout the Kane years. No wonder he looked, briefly, at Pep Guardiola’s advances when Manchester City tried to steal him away two summers ago.

Goalwise, there are too many to pick any all-time favourites, but some automatically standout. On New Year’s Day, 2015, he bagged a brace as Spurs turned over Chelsea, and then months later he did the same against Arsenal. They were top-drawer finishes, made all the sweeter due to the opposition, and announced the beginning of the Mauricio Pochettino era.

But Kane is not all about goals.

Perhaps to make up for a lack of creativity around him during the Jose Mourinho years, he became a midfield creator, too.

And Kane showed up at just the right time. In 2014, Tottenham were going through a slump in front of goal. The days of Jermain Defoe, Robbie Keane and Dimitar Berbatov were gone, and Spurs had suffered the embarrassment of spending nearly £30million on flop Roberto Soldado, who would score three times in 32 appearances in the season Kane was named a member of the first-team squad.

Handed his Premier League debut by Tim Sherwood in April 2014, Kane scored, of course, and then stayed in the side for the next two games, doing what he hasn’t stopped doing since: hitting the back of the net.

By the autumn of that year, regulars knew the kid from the Spurs academy had something about him, and new boss Pochettino thought so, too. In November, he scored a 90th-minute winner against Aston Villa – said by Poch to have saved his job – and has never looked back.

Kane’s career was forged in the white heat of Poch’s first Tottenham team, and of that side, Hugo Lloris, Eric Dier, Ben Davies and Heung-Min Son started on Sunday to see him rewrite the record books.

They and the majority of the 61,747 home supporters witnessed Kane transform from a young boy who was too chubby for Arsenal into Tottenham’s all-time record goalscorer.

Speaking to the fans after the game, Kane said he had been desperate to break the record in N17.

“I wanted to do it here, in this special place, in front of you – the amazing fans,” he said.

Unable to suppress his emotions, he added: “I was desperate to score today. I have been here since I was 11 years old.

“I played my first-ever game in the old White Hart Lane on a wet Monday night. I love being part of this. This is my family.”