Day 109 - Fulham FC - "GO You Whites"

Saturday afternoons in the Autumn, Winter and Spring. What does that mean? Well English Football of course! And as we were heading into London for the weekend with Alex for some sightseeing, I thought it would be nice if he and I could re-live some of those Saturday afternoons we spent when we lived in Farnham back in 2003. The story goes something like this...Alex returned home from school the first week and advised me that he had to have his own football team to support as all of the boys did at his school. I asked him what teams they supported and he mentioned Chelsea and Manchester United and Liverpool and Arsenal.

"Which team do you want to support?" I asked. 

His response: "Most kids like Chelsea or Man U, and I do not know where Liverpool is, but I like the name of Arsenal."

"Why's that?" I responded. 

"Because they are called the Gunners and they have a cool logo," he replied.

As good a reason as any.

So, at the time, I went online to see if I could get tickets to see Arsenal and found that, like the Toronto Maple Leafs, tickets were near impossible to get and if you were available, they would cost an arm and a leg. 

A wet start

I thought about what team I could support and quickly searched for a team in London and in the Premiership that had any Canadian internationals playing on them.  I found one team, Fulham FC, that had Tomasz Radzinski on it. He was a forward who played for Canada (he was from Toronto) and quite a good player.

Fulham plays out of Craven Cottage (named after a cottage that sat where the centre circle of the field is now), a stadium in west London that sits on the north bank of the Thames River. The grounds at that time held about 20,000 fans and the team was offering ticket packages or partial season tickets that allowed you to select the games you wanted with a limit of 3 games with the top 5 teams in the league, one of which was Arsenal.  For the same price of getting two tickets to a home Arsenal game I was able to get this Fulham home package for myself and Alex (who as an under 14 was only 5 pounds per game) which included a game with Arsenal as visitors. And so began my affiliation and love for Fulham FC.

Craven Cottage, the home of Fulham FC

The team was founded in 1879 as the Fulham St Andrew's Church Sunday School F.C and has been playing at Craven Cottage since 1896 havig been involved in professional football since 1898. Shortly after, they adopted white and black as their colours with a hint of red coming on later (see team logo) above. When the crowd cheers on the team, they yell either "Come on Fulham" or "Go you whites" as the home uniform is always white. 

Some interesting pieces of trivia about the team include being the first football club in England to sell hot dogs at their games (1926) and in 1951 the team was one of the first clubs to play an exhibition game in North America, in Montreal no less, against Glasgow Celtic before 29,000 fans. One of Fulham's players was Graham Leggat, who came to Canada to become the coach of the Toronto Metros that were re-named Toronto Blizzard (in the now defunct North American Soccer League) and became one of our most respected TV sports broadcasters.

View from our seats after a Fulham goal

We fast forward 15 years from when I was first introduced to Fulham FC, and the team has since been relegated to the Championship League, which is one below the Premiership (Arsenal and Man U and Chelsea and Liverpool are still in that league). 

But today we are going to watch Fulham play against Burton Albion, a team from the town of Burton-Upon-Trent in the Midlands. Burton is also in last place, so hopes are high for a Fulham home win.

We are staying in the Swiss Cottage area of  northwest London and so a tube ride to Putney Bridge and a walk along the river to Craven Cottage was in order. Just like times before, Alex and I had burgers and soft drinks for lunch, but now we also had beers when we got into the place.  As Alex said, "What is football without beer?" The day was misty and damp, but the grounds were packed. In the end, Fulham won 6-0. As they say here: "a satisfying result!"


Ale of the Day: ESB, Fuller's Brewery, Chiswick, West London.