{"id":2087,"date":"2020-04-26T16:19:09","date_gmt":"2020-04-26T15:19:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/57hattersyears.co.uk\/?p=2087"},"modified":"2025-06-10T18:09:29","modified_gmt":"2025-06-10T17:09:29","slug":"craven-cottage-fulham","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/57hattersyears.co.uk\/index.php\/1990s\/craven-cottage-fulham\/","title":{"rendered":"CRAVEN COTTAGE – FULHAM"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

..<\/p>\n\n\n\n

First County Visit:<\/td>Saturday 23rd November 1991<\/td><\/tr>
<\/td><\/td><\/tr>
Competition:<\/td>Barclays League Division 3 – (Tier 3)<\/td><\/tr>
<\/td><\/td><\/tr>
Result:<\/td>Fulham 1 – 2 Stockport County<\/td><\/tr>
<\/td><\/td><\/tr>
Attendance:<\/td>3,680<\/td><\/tr>
<\/td><\/td><\/tr>
Away Trip:<\/td>56<\/td><\/tr>
<\/td><\/td><\/tr>
Away Day:<\/td>220<\/td><\/tr>
<\/td><\/td><\/tr>
County Line-up<\/td>1 Neil Edwards; 2 Andy Thorpe; 3 Jim Carstairs; 4 Darren Knowles; 5 Alan Finley; 6 Bill Williams; 7 Jim Gannon; 8 Chris Beaumont; 9 Kevin Francis; 10 Peter Ward; 11 Mark Lillis<\/td><\/tr>
<\/td><\/td><\/tr>
Scorers:<\/td>Kevin Francis; Chris Beaumont<\/td><\/tr>
<\/td><\/td><\/tr>
Manager:<\/td>Danny Bergara<\/td><\/tr>
<\/td><\/td><\/tr>
County Visits:<\/td>3<\/td><\/tr><\/tbody><\/table><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

..<\/p>\n\n\nA PROPER FOOTBALL GROUND<\/span><\/a>\n\n\n

..<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>
\n

Growing up in the early 60\u2019s and beginning to take an interest in football, the first televised game that I can properly remember was the 1962 FA Cup Final.    <\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

..<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Spurs beat Burnley, and I can vividly recollect watching it with my grandad in his little terraced house in Openshaw.  But a matter of a few weeks later that the 1962 World Cup was held in Chile. I can\u2019t recall any TV coverage, (that I saw anyway), but even then I was an avid reader of newspapers and kept up with the unfolding events that way.  England went out at the quarter final stage, beaten 3-1 by the eventual winners Brazil.  But scanning the papers I became familiar with a lot of the names.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here\u2019s the line up from that Brazil game.  Ron Springett; Jimmy Armfield; Bobby Moore; Maurice Norman; Ray Wilson; Ron Flowers; Bobby Charlton; Jimmy Greaves; Bryan Douglas; Johnny Haynes and Gerry Hitchens.  Three of those, (Moore; Wilson & Charlton), were of course to play 4 years later when the Jules Rimet Trophy was held aloft with another 4, (Springett; Armfield; Flowers and Greaves), non-playing members of the squad on Final day. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Captain of the team was Johnny Haynes, and that\u2019s where the Fulham connection comes in.  Being captain of the team made him a big name whatever the case but he was a celebrated footballer.  A Fulham legend, he made nearly 600 appearances for them in the league.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

A worthy record in itself, demonstrating loyalty to one club, and coming no nearer to any silverware than a couple of losing FA Cup semi-final appearances.  But he\u2019s also celebrated for another major milestone in the English game.  He was the very first player to get paid \u00a3100 a week, and the lead up to that is an interesting diversion at this point.  The EFL website has a very interesting piece, (published in 2016, 55 years after the ground breaking move to break the maximum wage).  I reproduce it here:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

..<\/p>\n\n\n

\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

Without the players, there\u2019s no game. That, in blunt terms, was the rationale behind the formation of the Professional Footballers\u2019 Association, which began as the Players\u2019 Union and had even deeper roots in the Association Footballers\u2019 Union, formed in 1898 after The Football League\u2019s first decade.<\/em><\/strong> The bottom line of this maxim is that professional footballers can, if they are so minded, withdraw their labour. And in the early years of The Football League there were occasions when, in any other \u201cindustry\u201d, the workers would surely have downed tools.<\/em><\/strong> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 1902 the Manchester City and Wales player,\nDi Jones, cut his knee on a shard of broken glass during a pre-season match.\nThe wound became infected and he died. City refused to accept liability because\nit was a friendly. Jones, they maintained, was \u201cnot working”. There was no\ninsurance cover in place, so his wife and children received nothing.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The original players\u2019 union had all but folded,\nbut Jones\u2019 team-mate Billy Meredith, the fabled Welsh winger, said the memory\ndrove him to set up the Players\u2019 Union in 1907.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In modern times, players have effectively\nthreatened to strike by stating, in some cases, that they would walk off the\npitch in solidarity with a colleague being racially abused by opponents or\nspectators.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The spectre of industrial action is not, however, new to football. In 1961, under the leadership of Fulham player and future TV personality Jimmy Hill, the PFA called out its members. The aim was to force The Football League and the clubs to abolish the maximum wage \u2013 a salary cap in today\u2019s parlance – which meant players could be paid no more than \u00a320 a week during the season. In the summer they received \u00a317.<\/em><\/strong> The decision to strike was the culmination of a campaign that had been going on almost since The League kicked off 125 years ago. When Liverpool first won the championship, in 1900\/01, the average wage of their players was \u00a37 a week. The following season The Football League introduced a maximum weekly wage of \u00a34.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 1920 it stood at \u00a39, but four years later it\nwas down to \u00a38. Fast forward to 1953, the year of \u201cthe Matthews final\u201d, and the\nupper limit was still only \u00a315, reduced to \u00a313 over the summer.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Before the Second World War a footballer\u2019s pay\nwas above that of the average worker. By 1960, despite the advent of television\nand European competition, the gap had closed.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Stanley Matthews, who spanned both eras, was\nunsympathetic towards the union\u2019s position as the dispute flared again. Yet in\n’61, at a new-year rally of 190 players in Manchester it became clear\nBlackpool\u2019s Wizard of Dribble had changed his mind. \u201cI\u2019ve done well out of the\ngame, but could I ignore the injustice to my colleagues?\u201d he recalled. \u201cLoyalty\nto the players won. My hand went up.”<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

To the consternation of the Pools companies,\nthe strike was scheduled for Saturday 21st January. There were signs that the\nclubs\u2019 resolve was weakening, with a handful of wealthy clubs alert to the\nadvantage they might gain from being able to attract their rivals’ stars.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even Bob Lord, the outspoken Burnley chairman,\nsuddenly conceded there should be no wage-ceiling. In contrast, his counterpart\nat nearby Blackburn Rovers, Jim Wilkinson, argued that even a \u00a330 maximum must\nbe opposed as \u201cit would be suicide for many clubs.\u201d<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The chairman of the Trades Union Congress, Ted\nHill, appealed to the public to boycott matches that went ahead. He also warned\ndarkly that the labour movement would \u201cremember the blacklegs when they finish\nin football and want to come back into industry.\u201d<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then, with 72 hours to go before the master\nwinger became a striker and picket lines were manned at grounds around England,\nthe League management committee persuaded the clubs to agree to abolish the\nmaximum wage.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The PFA, emboldened by the news, opted not to\ncall off the strike.  There had been no\nmention by the League of the union\u2019s other historic bugbear, the\nretain-and-transfer system, which, as the redoubtable League secretary Alan\nHardaker put it candidly, \u201cenabled a club to retain a player against his will\nat the end of his contract and, not only that, to pay him less money while\ndoing so.\u201d<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hill and two union officials were summoned to\nthe Ministry of Labour to negotiate with Hardaker, League president and\nBarnsley chairman Joe Richards and Chelsea chairman Joe Mears. The PFA again\nprevailed. The strike was off.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

At that time, George Eastham, the silky schemer\nwho would be part of Alf Ramsey\u2019s England squad when they won the World Cup in\n1966, was challenging the archaic retain-and-transfer system through the legal\nsystem.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Eastham wanted to leave Newcastle United, who\nrefused to let him go. Even after the contractual issue had been resolved, the\nPFA bullishly urged him to continue the case, which he did even after Newcastle\nsold him to Arsenal. The case spluttered on until 1963 when the High Court\nruled in his favour, saying the League regulations and FA rules amounted to\nrestraint of trade.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The highly emotive word \u201cslavery\u201d had come to\nbe bandied about when players described their conditions.  This was perhaps an injudicious choice: the\nlot of a Fourth Division footballer, let alone Matthews, Billy Wright or Bobby\nCharlton, was hardly comparable with the cruelty, brutality and loss of basic\nliberties and human dignity to which, say, African slaves were once subjected.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was, nevertheless, a term which, for the\nplayers and their union, served its purpose in publicising their fight for a\nhigher minimum wage and the end of the maximum wage.  Hill\u2019s predecessor as PFA leader, ex-Portsmouth\nforward Jimmy Guthrie, who relied less on PR and more on old-fashioned\nmilitancy, thrust it into the heart of the debate over pay.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

When he was in his pomp at Pompey, before the\nWar, the maximum wage was \u00a38 during the season, \u00a36 in the summer. Injury or\ndemotion to the reserves meant \u00a32 a week less. <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Guthrie bemoaned The Football League\u2019s\n\u201cVictorian business ethic\u201d and targeted the clubs. The Scot was no stranger to\nsuch tactics; when he captained Portsmouth in a wartime Wembley final his team\nwere still unchanged in the dressing-room as kick-off loomed. He had told the\ndirectors they would not play unless the players were paid wages docked at the\nstart of the War.  <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

 \u201cJust\neight minutes before kick-off,\u201d said Guthrie, \u201cour masters rather ungracefully\nsurrendered.\u201d<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

He became the first full-time PFA chairman. In\n1955, addressing the TUC Congress in Blackpool, he propelled the twin issues of\nwages and contracts on to the front pages of the press.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI stand before you as the representative of\nthe last bonded men in Britain,\u201d he told delegates. \u201cThe conditions of the\nprofessional footballer\u2019s employment are akin to slavery.\u201d<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Meanwhile the introduction of floodlights,\nwhile thrilling for the public, was in Guthrie\u2019s opinion adding to the players\u2019\nworkload. He viewed it as evening work, or overtime. With that in mind he made\na well-publicised trip to Molineux to meet Billy Wright and other Wolves stars.\nAfter a dressing-room ballot, a game against Athletic Bilbao had to be\ncancelled.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even so, the concept of \u201cplayer power\u201d was\nstill years away. Coincidentally, Hill\u2019s Fulham colleague Johnny Haynes was the\nmost high-profile beneficiary of the lifting of the maximum wage, becoming the\nFootball League\u2019s first \u00a3100-a-week man in 1961.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Today the balance of power has shifted towards the players. Pay levels within the higher reaches of the English game mean that certain individuals earn more in a week than Matthews and his generation made in a lifetime.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

..<\/p>\n\n\n\n

How things have changed!!  And today\u2019s players, whilst probably never having heard of Haynes or George Eastham, (and certainly not Jimmy Guthrie), owe them a debt of gratitude.  Things would probably have changed anyway but they were the catalyst.  Just as a last aside about Haynes \u2013 his final appearance for Fulham was a home game on 17th<\/sup> January 1970 \u2026 against who else but Stockport County!!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

..<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>
\n

Craven Cottage<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

The Cottage itself in the corner of the ground. It housed the dressing rooms and administrative nerve centre of FFC<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

..<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Which brings us to November 1991, nearly 22 years later.  It was the Hatters first visit to Craven Cottage since Haynes swansong.  Jeff, Arthur and I travelled down.  I was intrigued to see the ground, tucked away by the Thames.  Having seen pictures of its impressive fa\u00e7ade, (below), I was eager to see it close at hand.  It\u2019s as good as unique in all the grounds I have ever visited, and the architecture reminds me of some properties at the top of Oldham Road in Manchester, just before getting into the city centre.  It wasn\u2019t only the frontage of the Main Stand, which stands on Stevenage Road, but the feature that lends its name to the ground.  Craven Cottage itself, (above).  It was akin to a cricket pavilion, with balconies and provided the dressing room accommodation as players entered the arena from the corner of the pitch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

..<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>
\n

Craven Cottage and its impressive external facade.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Designed by Archibald Leitch – the godfather of football stadium design, and certainly someone with more vision than the modern disciples of breeze-block arenas with no character and little architectural merit.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

..<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We were stationed in the Putney End, open terracing then\nbut since covered and seated.  It was the\narchetypal terrace in traditional ground, and Craven Cottage was certainly one\nof those.  It was where I stood on all\nthree visits that I made.  The weather\ngods smiled each time, albeit that the last visit, (in March 2000), it was a\nmore than chill night.  Temperature and\nresult wise!!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

..<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>
\n

By the banks of the Thames<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Craven Cottage as it was on each of my 3 County visits<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

..<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To our left was the Riverside, (also know as the Eric\nMiller) Stand, from the back of which a good view could undoubtedly be had of\nthe Boat Race each spring, as the Thames lapped right up to the boundary of the\nground.   At the far end was the\nHammersmith End, covered terracing, and to my eye yet another great feature of\nthe ground.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

..<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The Main Stand; Riverside Stand and Putney End<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

..<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Turning to the game. \nIt was the first season in Division 3, (Tier 3) for County and we were\nreasonably positioned in 7th<\/sup> place. \nFulham were at the start of a grim run, and 8 days previously had exited\nthe FA Cup at the hands of Hayes.  It was\nthe first time that they had ever succumbed to non-league opposition.  So the omens were good, and so it proved.  Fulham might have had a youthful Andy Cole,\n(on loan from Arsenal), in their line up but strikes from Kevin Francis and\nChris Beaumont gave us a 2-1 win.  The locals\nwere getting agitated and started a call for the managers head.  The bloke was unfortunately named Alan Dicks,\nand the inevitable cry started.  The\nCounty fans assembled on the Putney End joined in with gusto.  The homesters must have thought we were\ndisplaying solidarity with them, but I fear it was compelling desire to be able\nto stand on a terrace and shout out what might have led to police intervention\non other occasions.  Dicks Out!! <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In my travels I always fondly remember Craven Cottage.  One of the famous names in the game and it certainly didn\u2019t disappoint.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

April 2020<\/p>\n\n\n\n

..<\/p>\n\n\n\n

VISITS<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

..<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Day<\/strong><\/td>Date<\/strong><\/td>Competition<\/strong><\/td>Tier \/ Round<\/strong><\/td>Opponents<\/strong><\/td>Res<\/strong><\/td>F<\/strong><\/td>A<\/strong><\/td>Crowd<\/strong><\/td>Away Day<\/strong><\/td><\/tr>
Sat<\/td>23\/11\/91<\/td>Barclays League Division 3<\/td>Tier 3<\/td>Fulham<\/td>W<\/td>2<\/td>1<\/td>3,680<\/td>220<\/td><\/tr>
Sat<\/td>23\/10\/93
(Highlights)<\/a><\/strong><\/td>		Endsleigh League Division 2<\/td>Tier 3<\/td>Fulham<\/td>W<\/td>1<\/td>0<\/td>3,615<\/td>268<\/td><\/tr>
Tues<\/td>07\/03\/00<\/td>Nationwide Football League – Division 1<\/td>Tier 2<\/td>Fulham<\/td>L<\/td>1<\/td>4<\/td>8,688<\/td>422<\/td><\/tr><\/tbody><\/table><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

..<\/p>\n\n\n\n

ON MY JOURNEY WITH COUNTY AROUND 180 GROUNDS<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

..<\/p>\n\n\nPreviously – DEAN COURT<\/span><\/a>\n\nNext stop – GAY MEADOW<\/span><\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

First County Visit: Saturday 23rd November 1991 Competition: Barclays League Division 3 – (Tier 3) Result: Fulham 1 – 2 Stockport County Attendance: 3,680 Away Trip: 56 Away Day: 220 County Line-up 1 Neil Edwards; 2 Andy Thorpe; 3 Jim Carstairs; 4 Darren Knowles; 5 Alan Finley; 6 Bill Williams; 7 Jim Gannon; 8 Chris […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2087","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-1990s"],"yoast_head":"\n57 Hatters Years : CRAVEN COTTAGE - FULHAM<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Stockport County - three trips to the ground on the banks of the Thames - Craven Cottage. 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