A little pocket of Sweden in my heart
Efter en trevlig helg i London återger Daniel Crawford sin syn på vad vi upplevde
A LITTLE POCKET OF SWEDEN IN MY HEART
Seven years ago, Fulham FC was in danger of folding. The fans did what they could in the shape of Fulham 2000, a campaign designed to ensure the future of the club, but we seemed to be fighting a losing battle. Only the gratitude of a Conservative MP (and believe me, it pains me to type that) whose daughter I went to school me and lobbied non-stop for a year and a half preserved both the club and our historic old ground. That was enough for me, but soon there was the white-knuckle ride promised by Al-Fayed that took us to the Premiership, and once again put our dear old ground in jeopardy.
Of course, I knew that success bred success and we might have cultivated a following in Europe’s footballing hotbeds, such as Italy (I met a Fulham fan in Murano). But when I travelled to the Golden Lion in Putney to meet fellow journalist Nick Bylund and his father, I did not expect to find two man more knowledgeable about the history of the club that most inside Loftus Road the following day.
The Golden Lion, just a stone’s throw from Putney Bridge and a Maik Taylor goal kick from the Cottage, is one of the last great Fulham pubs. Pictures of Johnny Haynes are spread across the walls, plus tails of the Division Three promotion season captured in colourful collages and there is, my own favourite, a lovely snap of Louis Saha running towards the Fulham fans at the Cottage. Friday was just the preparation for Saturday. We watched as Manchester City embarrassed Tottenham at White Hart Lane with the sort of defending that Michael Mison and Kevin Moore might have produced in the dark days and then saw Ipswich overwhelm a Portsmouth side clearly still feeling the after effects of their promotion party. The final game, between Reading and Nottingham Forest, drifted by painfully by comparison.
The Scandinavian Supporters’ Club t-shirts were out in force in the Bush Ranger (an adopted ‘Fulham pub’ for match days) on Goldhawk Road. After walking what seemed to be the length of the London Marathon course to reach the ‘Bush,’ I soon found Nick, with sunglasses perched on top of his head, holding conversation with a few Fulham fans. One of them was Neale Garnett who, like me found Loftus Road a lot easier to get to than the Cottage, but still didn’t want to be there for much longer. Missile Mike, (that was his name!) from Putney, joined us and after I had wrongly predicted the make-up of Chris Coleman’s first midfield we headed up to the ground.
Here, I took Neale up his kind offer of a seat in a hospitality box. It was the first time I had done so at any ground and, although I enjoyed watching the game from a more comfortable position than my usual seat in the George Wimpey Stand (where they clearly haven’t heard of places to put your legs), I felt curiously detached from the fans. The game itself was one of those matches I thought I’d seen a thousand times before under Jean Tigana. Fulham, geed up by a pre-match huddle, dominated the early stages but couldn’t penetrate the Newcastle defence with the telling pass. They looked toothless in attack once Saha had injured his rib, although Hammond showed his potential in giving Jonathan Woodgate a torrid afternoon. Hammond might have scored had Shay Given not been so athletic to claw his header away from the far post, and later, he had two good chances to wrap it up (although I do believe his last-gasp wayward shot that might have ended up in the River Thames was designed to waste a few more nail-biting seconds).
Then, Newcastle began to get on top. Bellamy, who I would have booked for being a persistent irritant, had already tumbled to earth inside the box before they went ahead. It was from a set-piece and granted Alan Shearer’s bullet header did show you why he is England’s top goalscorer since Bobby Charlton, but I despaired at conceding again from a corner. It is not as if Fulham are a small side and when Newcastle have players such as Shearer and Woodgate, who are good in the air, you would expect the boys to pick them up, but the former England captain was given the luxury of a free header.
I wandered off ‘to some untoward place’ at half-time, principally to find a toilet but a met up with an old friend, the Ealing North MP Steve Pound, who introduced me to Barry Davies, the legendary BBC commentator. Now I’m not usually lost for words, but this time I was star-struck. Barry took away a copy of Sportscene and agreed that Fulham didn’t look like scoring, something which might have been a consequence of our exhausting European run. At this particular moment in time, while I was trying to persuade the man from Betfair that investing in Sportscene made good business sense, Coleman must have been giving the boys, the full hairdryer treatment, because they were a different team after the break.
Luis Boa Morte had terrified Andy Griffin in the first half and with Jon Harley showing a turn of pace that Maurice Greene would have endorsed with Nike trainers, most of our success came down the left hand side. It was predictable that Griffin was sent off for trying to ‘break Boa Morte’ by but entirely against the laws of logic, not to mention physics, that Sylvain Legwinski would bend an equaliser around Given and in off the far post for the equaliser. As I said to somebody shortly after I had informed that box that ‘Legwinski can’t shoot,’ it would have just epitomised our ‘lucky’ season had the ball bounced off the post and away to safety.
Coleman then threw on Barry Hayles, a good honest professional who had made an amazing recovery from a horrific neck injury, and someone who must be the human equivalent of the battering ram. We had soaked up some pressure (Taylor making a few blinding saves – including a terrific block from Kieron Dyer) and knocked at the Magpie door a few times, before it came ajar. Hammond, who had made a nuisance of himself all afternoon, flicked on a Sean Davis free-kick, and Barry wrestled with Stephen Caldwell, allowing the unmarked Lee Clark to fire home a glorious winner. The rest of the evening, including some Geordie banter (‘You can stick your f****** Abba up your arse’ jest to the Swedish) was lost in a glorious sea of victory. There is now a little pocket of Sweden in my heart, alongside Sven, of course.
// Daniel Crawford
[Daniel Crawford är editor på London magasinet Sportscene, och skriver även exklusivt för ScandinavianWhitesOnline här på SvenskaFans.com. Om ni är intresserade av att beställa magasinet så kontakta SWO-redaktionen.]
