We're going home?
Daniel Crawford låter meddela att klubben överväger ombyggnadsplaner som fansen tagit fram.
The preferred proposal, put forward at a public meeting of supporters in January, is to bolt seats onto the terraced parts of the ground and would significantly reduce costs of development that have spiralled to £100m over the last year. "The bolt-on-seats plan is the club’s first choice. The idea is to put seats in at the Hammersmith and Putney ends and into the lower part of Stevenage Road stand. This would allow the club to comply with FA regulations relatively cheaply and ensure a return to Craven Cottage," said a club employee. No other work on the ground would be required as the Riverside stand is fully seated and only relocation of the disabled area at the back of the Hammersmith End would be needed.
The plan was championed by fans’ pressure group Back to the Cottage when it detailed its opposition to a permanent move away from Fulham’s 106-year home. It was based on similar schemes undertaken by Arsenal to replace standing in the North Bank, at Hillsborough, where the disaster killing 96 fans during the FA Cup semi-final between Nottingham Forest and Liverpool in April 1989 brought the Taylor report that banned standing in the top two divisions of English football.
Using temporary seating to cover terraced areas is a popular concept in Germany, where sides such as Schalke 04 and 1860 Munich have transformed areas of standing into comfortable seated stands. The idea is so popular that the new Berlin stadium that will host both the 2006 World Cup and the local side, Hertha Berlin who knocked Fulham out of the UEFA Cup, has been designed to support the transformation of terraces to seated stands.
However, there are concerns both inside and outside of the club about the validity of the project. "Some people think it won’t work and a lot of humble employees believe more energy is being devoted to trying to find another ground than this scheme. It is the front runner of all the schemes, but there are problems with it like the depth of the Hammersmith End which might make seating cramped and the fact that it would significantly reduce the capacity of the ground," the source said. Leading architects have said that the plans are viable in theory, but that the steepness of the Hammersmith End would make for seating for ‘the first 10 rows’ but the plan would hit problems further up the stand.
Going back? The inside line suggests that Fulham might be making an unpredicted return to Craven Cottage, their historical home
According to the insider, talks that will finalise an agreement to share Stamford Bridge with local rivals Chelsea ‘are at a delicate stage’ and the club hopes to overcome a council restriction on how many games can be played at the ground. "This process will be lengthy, though, because the council have already indicated that restrictions on home games are part of the agreement after the building of Chelsea Village and the West Stand. We want a joint tenancy agreement, but Chelsea don’t appear very keen – they would prefer a straight groundshare," the source revealed. The club ‘are still looking other ground options’ including staying on at Loftus Road for a second season and building a new ground within the borough but described rumours of a move to Osterley as ‘nonsense, because it would be unworkable’.
Last year, Fulham won a lengthy legal battle with local residents to secure the planning permission to redevelop Craven Cottage. It looked as if the ground was ready to be built and that was the impression employees at the club got. Our source said: "That was a great victory for the club and I thought it was all over. But the management were not happy with a 28,000 all-seater stadium, they were looking at higher capacity." Fulham’s CEO Bruce Langham was one of those pressing for a higher capacity, using the example of Southampton’s St. Mary’s Stadium. However, Langham’s ideas are fundamentally flawed. They fail to take into account Fulham’s historically small fan base – only six years ago 5,000 fans were watching Fulham in the Third Division – and the competition for support in London, which has thirteen professional clubs and countless semi-professional and amateur sides were as Southampton’s nearest rivals are further along the coast at Portsmouth.
During their communication with representatives from Back to the Cottage, club officials have ridiculed the proposals as ‘unworkable and unsafe.’ The Trust, though, has received confirmation from two independent architects that the plans would not endanger the safety of supporters in either the Hammersmith Terrace or the Putney End. The only problem would be with sightlines of supporters, sitting high up in the Hammersmith Terrace, who would have to crane their necks to get a good view of the game. This problem could well be solved by the expansion of the corporate hospitality boxes and Supporters Club boxes at the back of the stand and the provision that seating could only reach a certain height in the stand. The two architects have told Back to the Cottage that a revamped Craven Cottage, containing bolt-on seats, could hold around 17,000 with the corners of the ground at the junction of the Riverside and Hammersmith Terrace stands and the Stevenage Road junction filled in.
The Supporters Trust will present their plans to Fulham fans at a second public meeting at the Hammersmith Club this week. The Trust remain confident that they can secure a meeting with Al-Fayed and present their plans to the Club management in the form of a feasibility study.
// Daniel Crawford
[Daniel Crawford är editor på London magasinet Sportscene, och skriver även exklusivt för ScandinavianWhitesOnline här på SvenskaFans.com.]
