Fulham 2 Everton 0

Premier League

Saturday 13 April 2019

Cottage industry

The context

John’s first time here but familiar territory for me both off and on the pitch. I watch Everton regularly, and had only missed four games at Goodison Park all season; they were sure to do well against an already-relegated home side that hadn’t picked up any points since before Christmas.

The history

bridge drive

Londoners have always crossed the Thames at Putney. Professional housing began spreading northwards towards Hammersmith after a new road bridge and railway station opened there during the 1800s. Fulham Palace – occupied by London’s bishops for eleven centuries – gradually disappeared behind tidy villas, while local entrepreneur Joseph Mears built protective river walls to reclaim acres of marshy foreshore.  

residence (Alex White)

Dense forest here was once used as royal hunting grounds. Elizabethan courtier Lord Craven later built a comfortable residence – known as Craven Cottage – just beyond the Palace boundary. Edward Bulwer-Lytton and Sir Arthur Conan-Doyle would be among its more noteworthy tenants. Fire destroyed this house in 1888, after which Fulham FC purchased the site.

pavilions

This nomadic team had already played at nine different locations. Their new ground soon acquired a small stand known as the Rabbit Hutch, actually comprising four separate seated pavilions with individual gable roofs. It would be used until 1904, when Fulham fell out with London County Council over the ramshackle state of Craven Cottage and innovative football ground designer Archibald Leitch was brought in to carry out some modifications. 

frontage

Hampden Park was one of Leitch’s early projects. He afterwards produced many solid – if often functional – stadia for various clubs, with Blackburn Rovers and Tottenham Hotspur joining Fulham as his first English customers. Craven Cottage would be built to unusually high standards. Its elegant frontage featured ornate red brickwork, delicate mouldings and classical semi-circular windows.

pavilion (Ed Holford)

There was also a pavilion. Some of Leitch’s later grounds – among them Bradford Park Avenue and Portsmouth – featured similarly ornate house-like structures. Fulham’s became known, purely by association, as “The Cottage”; dressing rooms and boardroom were on separate floors, while directors could watch games from benches on its gabled balcony. 

dear John (Daily Herald)

Fulham played First Division football between 1949-52 and 1959-68. This period almost exactly parallels the career of inside-forward Johnny Haynes, who is generally regarded as their greatest ever player. Haynes made nearly six hundred appearances, helped them reach two FA Cup semi-finals and but for serious injuries incurred in a car crash would probably also have led England at the 1966 World Cup.

Cohen straight

George Cohen had more luck. The attacking right-back – another one club man, who represented Fulham more than four hundred times – replaced Jimmy Armfield as England’s first choice during 1964. An overlapping style suited Alf Ramsay’s midfield-heavy team, where he perfectly complemented left-back Ray Wilson and set up Bobby Charlton to score his decisive goal against Portugal.

Miller’s tale

Craven Cottage changed little for six decades. Its open side terrace was particularly popular during Oxford-Cambridge boat races. But Tottenham’s 1964 purchase of Alan Mullery provided sufficient funds to roof the Hammersmith End, and then – despite successive relegations that left Fulham briefly in Division Three – the smart new Eric Miller Stand was built.

final reckoning

Much-loved manager Alec Stock drew on thirty years’ management experience and restored some much-needed pride. His well-balanced side quite unexpectedly overcame indifferent League form to reach the 1975 FA Cup Final; they beat First Division opposition in Nottingham Forest, Everton, Carlisle United and Birmingham City but ultimately lost 2-0 against West Ham.

partnership

Stock understood the value of experience. Fulham’s team that day included Bobby Moore, who spent his last three League seasons here; Mullery – another former England captain – had returned during 1972. Twelve months later they signed Rodney Marsh and George Best, who drew expectant crowds wherever they went. The flamboyant partnership’s first game saw Hereford beaten 4-1 at Craven Cottage in front of 24,000.

Best would stay until November 1977. Marsh, however, lasted only four months. Neither were keen on Stock’s prosaic successor Bobby Campbell; Fulham fans had equal reservations, especially after Campbell got them relegated again. But expansive football and nespaper headlines soon returned when Malcolm Macdonald succeeded him. 

Macdonald possessed enormous self-belief. For two seasons his achievements almost came to match it. Fulham’s skilful young team – which included such emerging talents as Tony Gale, Ray Houghton and Gordon Davies – went back up in 1982, challenging again for much of the following season. Only late loss of form and their controversial final day defeat at Derby prevented a second successive promotion.  

The journey

We parked by West Ruislip station and changed at Notting Hill Gate. The District Line’s meandering overground route was pleasantly sun-dappled, but this still feels like bandit country to fans of a certain age. Olympia and Parsons Green could always be dangerous; Kensington High Street, meanwhile – following one notoriously violent Chelsea ambush there in 1978 – has particular resonance for Evertonians.

Our riverside walk from Putney Bridge tube took us through Bishop’s Park. This was once the Bishop of London’s garden and nowadays features a moving memorial to the International Brigade. It also featured in The Omen, where demonic forces pursue Patrick Troughton’s character Father Brennan to All Saints Church before memorably skewering him with its falling lightning conductor.

The ground

Macdonald’s talented side was soon sold off to pay debts. Fulham slowly declined into lower league anonymity and Craven Cottage presented a sorry sight by the mid-1990s. But its location, and the disposable income of West London’s affluent converts, proved highly attractive to Sky-era speculators. Massive cash injections by successive wealthy owners saw them become Premier League regulars.

The Taylor Report’s hegemony presented significant difficulties. Seating this traditional ground would mean significant outlay set against only limited return on investment; relocation, too, proved impractical in an expensive area that lacked any other suitable options. Fulham accordingly rented Loftus Road from QPR for some years while considering their next move. 

Prefabrication provided the answer. Old stands were reclad; cellular metal steps and plastic seating replaced concrete terracing, venerable floodlight pylons became slender lightweight poles. I tried unsuccessfully to work out how much is actually permanent. Girders holding up each re-roofed end, for instance, appear original, and what looked like terrace steps could still be seen underneath. But it still felt like watching football at an outdoor concert.

Leitch’s beautiful buildings happily remain intact. Their warm-coloured brickwork showed evidence of jetwashing since my last visit, and are now nicely set off by a fine statue of Haynes. I was also pleased to see that open space still exists – by the Thames/Hammersmith End corner – where you can pause and watch boats go by. If it seems rather more crowded nowadays then that’s progress for you.

Flesh and wine

Craven Cottage occupies a tranquil location in one of London’s more desirable neighbourhoods. Given Fulham fans’ reputation for inoffensiveness (some perfectly understated graffiti on Stevenage Road used to read “Jimmy Hill is Satan’s friend”) it felt rather surreal that comedy writer John Sullivan made them the favourite team of Wolfie Smith, Tooting’s self-styled urban guerilla.

Polite civility prevails in SW6. Matchday juxtaposed posh folk going about their normal business, Fulham’s herbivorous fanbase and several thousand visiting scallies. It also meant expensive, pretentious takeaways – which we studiously ignored – along with pubs that either wouldn’t let us in (King’s Arms) or didn’t serve proper beer (the unexpectedly vast, dingy and raucous Temperance).

Our original plan involved drinking on Hammersmith Broadway. Thoughts of a Pogues-style dirty, delightful, drunken old day were however reimagined when I made loose arrangements (very much so, as things turned out) to meet my friend Cassie at Ye Olde Spotted Horse. This seventeenth century boozer proved welcoming enough; unfortunately she never turned up, but we did eventually run into one another after the game.

I had heard good things about Craven Cottage pies. My sources proved reliable and there was just enough time before kick off to wolf down an excellent Cornish pasty underneath the Hammersmith End. John, meanwhile, played Russian roulette with various burger stalls, couldn’t make up his mind, settled on buying something inside, saw nothing he fancied so accordingly went hungry.

The game

We had been predictably disorganised when buying tickets. Our seats were therefore below pitch level, but fortunately the many stewards nearby (including one frankly scary individual called Pitch Runner) crouched in a sort of trench once play began. This thoughtful policy allowed us unimpeded views of Aleksandar Mitrovic’s chunky thighs and the Swan Vesta-like hairstyle recently adopted by Ryan Babel.

Babel excelled today. This was mostly because Phil Jagielka and Kurt Zouma didn’t mark him properly. He had already been causing problems when his neat cutback enabled Tom Cairney to score neatly past Jordan Pickford straight after half-time. Everton then woke up a little;  Dominic Calvert-Lewin hit Segio Rico’s post, but Babel – parting Everton’s hesitant defenders like the proverbial Red Sea – made sure of all three points.

Fulham deserved the win. Neither did I begrudge this benign, clacker-waving crowd their post-match celebrations. After all – as Wolfie Smith well knew – sharing misery is an inherent virtue.

Teams and goals  

Fulham: Rico, Fosu-Mensah (Christie 66), Le Marchand, Ream, Bryan, Chambers, Zambo Anguissa (Odoi 89), R Sessegnon, Cairney, Babel (Seri 83), Mitrovic. Unused subs: Kebano, Schurrle, Fabri, Elliott.

Everton: Pickford, Coleman, Jagielka, Zouma, Digne, Andre Gomes, Gueye, Richarlison (Tosun 84), Sigurdsson (Lookman 74), Bernard (Walcott 84), Calvert-Lewin. Unused subs: Baines, Keane, Stekelenburg, Davies.

Goals: Cairney 46, Babel 69

Attendance: 24,971.