Fulham 2 Everton 0

Premier League

Saturday 13 April 2019

Cottage industry

The context

John’s first time here but familiar territory for me. 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. Notable tenants included Edward Bulwer-Lytton and Sir Arthur Conan-Doyle. Fire destroyed it in 1888, after which nomadic local team Fulham FC purchased the site.

pavilions

Fulham built a small stand – actually comprising four separate gabled pavilions – that became known as the Rabbit Hutch. This singular structure survived until 1904, when they fell out with London County Council over the ramshackle state of Craven Cottage and innovative football ground designer Archibald Leitch was hired to carry out major modifications. 

frontage

Hampden Park had been one of Leitch’s early projects. He subsequently 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 was built to particularly lavish specifications. An elegant frontage featured warm red brickwork, delicate mouldings and classical semi-circular windows.

pavilion (Ed Holford)

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

dear John (Daily Herald)

First Division football was played here between 1949-52 and 1959-68. This period almost exactly parallels the career of inside-forward Johnny Haynes, generally regarded as Fulham’s greatest ever player. Haynes made nearly six hundred appearances and helped them reach two FA Cup semi-finals. He would probably have captained England’s World Cup-winning team but for serious injuries incurred in a 1962 car crash.

you lucky people

Haynes also came to symbolise club captain Jimmy Hill’s campaign against the maximum wage.  Fulham chairman Tommy Trinder – a famous comedian originally from Hammersmith  – had once said he should earn £100 per week. This bluff was duly called when Hill prevailed against the FA; Trinder kept his word and made him Britain’s highest-paid footballer. 

Cohen straight

George Cohen had better luck than Haynes. 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 for a fine Hammersmith End roof, and then – despite back-to-back relegations that left Fulham briefly playing Third Division football – the smart new Eric Miller Stand was built.

final reckoning

Promotion followed inside two seasons. Alec Stock – who had nearly thirty years’ experience – then took over as manager. His well-balanced side overcame indifferent League form to reach the 1975 FA Cup Final; they beat Division One opponents in Nottingham Forest, Everton, Carlisle United and Birmingham City, but ultimately lost against West Ham at Wembley.

partnership

Fulham’s team that day included Bobby Moore. He spent his last few League seasons here, as did Mullery – another former England captain – who had returned during 1972. Twelve months later Stock signed Rodney Marsh and George Best. This flamboyant parnership drew expectant crowds wherever they went; their first game saw Hereford beaten 4-1 at Craven Cottage in front of more than 24,000 people.

super trouper

Best stayed until November 1977. Marsh made far fewer appearances and left after just four months. Neither were keen on Stock’s prosaic replacement Bobby Campbell; fans had equal reservations, especially after Campbell got them relegated again. But expansive football and regular newspaper headlines soon returned when Malcolm Macdonald became manager. 

skilful

Macdonald possessed enormous self-belief. For a while 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

going underground

We parked by West Ruislip station and changed at Notting Hill Gate. The District Line’s meandering overground route was pleasantly sun-dappled. Olympia and Parsons Green still feel like bandit country to fans of a certain age; Kensington High Street has particular resonance for Evertonians following one notoriously vicious Chelsea ambush in 1978 .

demonic

Our riverside walk from Putney Bridge tube took us through Bishop’s Park. This pleasant open space was given a slightly darker aspect for Richard Donner’s controversial 1976 film The Omen, in which demonic forces pursue Patrick Troughton’s character Father Brennan to nearby All Saints Church where he gets skewered by its falling lightning conductor.

The ground

a devil put aside

Macdonald’s best players were sold to pay debts. Craven Cottage become distinctly shabby; Hill came back as chairman, defeating a proposed merger with QPR. But this location, and more importantly the disposable income of West London’s affluent converts, attracted eager Sky-era speculators. Cash injections by successive wealthy owners saw Fulham become Premier League regulars.

traditional

The Taylor Report’s blunt hegemony presented significant difficulties. Seating this traditional ground would mean significant outlay, set against limited return on investment; relocation also proved impractical in an expensive area lacking any suitable open land. Fulham accordingly rented Loftus Road from QPR while considering their next move. 

prefabrication

Prefabrication came to the rescue. Old stands were reclad; cellular metal steps and plastic seating replaced concrete, venerable floodlight pylons became slender steel poles. I couldn’t work out how much of the original ground remains. Girders behind each re-roofed end, for instance, appear Edwardian, and what looked like terrace steps could still be seen underneath. But overall it felt like watching football at an outdoor concert.

beautiful

Leitch’s beautiful buildings happily remain intact. There was evidence of sensitive restoration since my last visit and they are now nicely set off by a fine statue of Haynes. Open space still exists – at the Thames/Hammersmith End corner – where you can pause and watch boats go by; it might feel rather more crowded nowadays, but that’s progress for you.

Flesh and wine

tranquil

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.

civility

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

pony trap

Our original plan had 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.

beforehand

I had heard good things about Craven Cottage pies. My sources proved reliable and there was just enough time beforehand to scoff an excellent Cornish pasty outside 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

below

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.

problems

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 crisply 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.