Patience.org

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.

This is at the Royal Naval Dockyard on a blustery day. There’s more pictures of the Dockyard and the old capital of St George’s on a quiet Monday morning, all linked from this picture.

It’s in Bermuda in fact, and before any pedants point it out, the No.9 doesn’t even go to Fulham Broadway. There are more pictures of scenes from Bermuda linked to from this one and we’ll get the pictures of what the little one got up to over there in the next couple of days.

If there’s a camera around, he’ll find it. As ever, more recent photos linked from this one, including some early fire engine action shots.

And my parents have me dressed as a dog. What’s up with that?

As usual, there’s more pictures if you click on this one.

He had his first birthday earlier this month and a good time was had by all, as you can see here – click on the picture for more frivolity.

We’ve been a little lax in taking pictures of him, but we have an excuse, as we approach his first birthday. Anyway, there’s some pictures of him in Washington Square Park and at home with his friend Griffin linked from the one below.

A wonderful piece here from 1975 summing up what it was apparently like at Fulham in the 50’s & 60s during our previous glory years.

You see, to be a Fulham favorite it has always paid to be flawed in some way, preferably on the pitch:

Earlier there was Eddie Lowe, the statutory baldy at wing-half, alleged to have lost all his hair overnight through the shock of reading one of Walter Winterbottom’s coaching pamphlets on peripheral vision. Or Jim Langley bow- legged back with convict’s crew-cut who, astonishingly, played for England and didn’t let us down (though we were terribly worried for him)…

Anyway, Frank Keating, one of the best football journalists around, tells it better than anybody, so read on.