Patience.org

So over the last couple of weeks, Fulham have finally taken the shackles off the person who write their PR guff, but unfortunately it’s to explain in the past tense what people were asking to be told over the last six months when it was current and we still held out hope of playing once more at the Cottage. The first concrete change came in Fayed’s statement of December 23 2002, which was the first time he publicly acknowledged that returning to the Cottage was not priority number one anymore.

Now, after much FUD has been spread by all sides, Fulham explains exactly why the costs of redeveloping the ground had risen from the initial estimate of 60m pounds to around 100m pounds.

The problem the Cottage faces is that it is in a unique position. There are still many other grounds in the middle of residential areas (though a lot fewer than ten years ago), but ground like Anfield are not surrounded by houses worth about a million pounds each on one side and a river on the other side, which provides a unique set of political and environment restrictions that we’ve known about for 15 years or more.

And the fact that the statement is written in the past tense only goes to prove that painful as it might be, it’s time to look elsewhere. The only alternative is that we get relegated and require lower wage bills and seats fixed to the existing terracing. Some choice.

In the Guardian, Jimmy said “I was gutted to hear Bill had died,” he said. “He was a great drinker but also a very good player. Only he could get tanked up with 10 pints before a match and still win.”

One of the more bizarre images of the day of protests outside another team’s ground that we don’t really want to call home for much longer:

Still, the main thing is that we won 1-0.

…I was a lot younger, but was able to be more involved due to actually living there at the time. For wont of a better description, I was one of the “pimply ones in their jeans and trainers, capering and yelling,” mentioned in this article from the time. I still have video of me meandering on to the pitch at half time.

Still, eventually nature intervened, the chairman, David Bulstrode died of a heart attack and his plans collapsed with him on the dance floor of a nightclub.

CRAVING FOR LIFE AT THE COTTAGE

Ronald Atkin at Craven Cottage
The Observer – Sunday 1 March 1987

There’s still a lot of life in the old girl and her followers. At the end of this match the fans danced to the rousing strains of the grand old (borrowed) refrain ‘Viva El Fulham’ and applauded – yes, applauded – Walsall’s supporters, who had pulled off a nifty piece of PR by bringing along a banner pleading ‘Don’t Kill Fulham.’

At half-time more than a thousand of the season’s best league attendance at Craven Cottage of 5,944 had staged a peaceful invasion of the pitch, and a moving sight it was, too. First came the pimply ones in their jeans and trainers, capering and yelling; they were followed at a dignified pace by pensioners, family groups, ordinary people who form the nostalgic, diminished following of Fulham.

They all made for the directors’ box – empty, alas, of directors at that moment – had their say and then dispersed as quietly as they had entered. A hard core of youngsters occupied the centre circle, extending the interval to almost half-an-hour, and in the end had to be escorted back to the terraces, sympathetically but firmly, by the police.

There was a further brief, foolish foray onto the field by half-a-dozen fans towards the end, but Fulham’s players persuaded them to leave before the law got to them.

Thus passed off the first of what is certain to be many demonstrations in the battle to save Fulham from death by merger at the end of this season. Appropriately, their team also refused to lie down, fighting back from two goals down to brighten this day with a draw.

Somebody had been busy with the spray paint and hacksaws during the night at Craven Cottage, the stadium they want to pull down to erect yuppie dwellings on this attractive riverside site. Both crossbars were broken and the old red brick walls of the ground were daubed with messages of lament and defiance at the club’s threatened demise.

Hasty repairs ensured that the goals were stable, but the damage inflicted on the soul of Fulham in the past few days will require more skilful surgery.

Even the re-entry of the burly former chairman, Ernie Clay, improbably mounted on a white charger and bearing a blank cheque with which to buy back the club, was treated with scorn by the graffiti merchants. Clearly, they lack faith in his intentions, and so does the manager, Ray Lewington, who said afterwards: ‘We are taking it that we are going to be broken up at the end of the season.’

Tomorrow Lewington will call on Jim Smith, manager of Queen’s Park Rangers, the club with which Fulham are to be merged, to sort out the future of his players.

Tomorrow, too, there will be a meeting, organised by FANS (Fulham Association of Non-stop Support), at Hammersmith Town Hall, where speakers will include Bobby Robson and Roy Hattersley. Today the Football League are in urgent discussion about the merger. There is much more than talking to be done, however, if Fulham are to be saved.

On an afternoon of spring-like sunshine, the air of the Cottage was laden with symbolism. As they filtered into the ground the crowd were greeted with a lively rendition of ‘United we stand, divided we fall’ from the loudspeakers, and there were banners galore draped over the railings around the pitch.

One announced defiantly: ‘We’ll never leave the Cottage’ and others were extremely uncomplimentary about Messrs Clay and David Bulstrode, the club chairman and boss of the property company which owns both Fulham and QPR. ‘Asset Strippers Are Barstards’ said one, and you could appreciate the sentiment if not the spelling.

Fulham’s exciting revival apart, the match itself wasn’t up to much, but then they’re used to that down by the riverside. Walsall had their sights on tomorrow night’s Cup replay with Watford, but even so it required three fine saves by Vaughan to keep them out in the first half.

With an hour gone, and only seconds after refusing Fulham a penalty, the referee awarded one at the other end when Elkins brought down Cross so heavily that he needed treatment. Christie thumped home the kick, and three minutes later Cross headed in Kelly’s precise centre for Walsall’s second.

A Donnellan penalty put Fulham back in the match after 73 minutes, and 10 minutes later Barnett ran in the equaliser from close range amid much rejoicing onfield and off.

So to that extraordinary conclusion, with rival supporters applauding one another as the visiting fans flaunted that banner ‘Don’t Kill Fulham.’

So say all of us.

So it appears that upon further investigation, i.e. reading the press reports a bit more closely, Fulham chairman Mohamed Al Fayed has sold at least part of our ground to a company with Fulham in its name but with little else that suggests a return to football at Craven Cottage. Fulham River Projects Ltd is its name and developing riverside housing is clearly its game.

The fact that Fayed says some 15m pounds has resulted from the “non-sale” of the Cottage means that a transaction has taken place. Some part of some company that owns some part of Craven Cottage has been sold and is now partially out of the hands of Fayed. His protestation that the Cottage has not been sold is no doubt true in the sense that the majority is sill in his control. But anyone who knows anything about business will know what this ultimately means.

No doubt it will take the back pages of Private Eye to decipher exactly what he has been up to as most other journalists seem incapable of digging beneath the increasingly frail PR layer that Fulham presents. But it’s a shame we had to gain what success we have in this manner.

Fulham Leisure Holdings (BVI) Ltd, Fayed’s BVI-based holding company, arranged a sale of the club to Fulham River Projects Ltd. Fulham Football Club (1987) Ltd owns the ‘club’ in the form of its name, its player contracts and so on. Any Fulham fan that remembers the prospect of ‘Fulham Park Rangers’ playing at Loftus Road or Stamford Bridge will know the significance of that date and owes a debt of gratitude to Jimmy Hill and the Muddyman family for ensuring that wasn’t the death of the club.

It’s a lot easier to deal with this not being near the place while this is going on. But I’m glad I was there for what was a dire, but apparently final league game at the Cottage in April.

Fulham will move on, no doubt at a ground-share with either Chelsea or QPR. It won’t be the same, far, far from it. But hopefully it will be better than some of the other time many of us have spent at the Cottage.