Al Fayed precis som Tony Blair?
Chris Guard gör debut för HammyEnd, en sann Fulham-älskare skriver om fotboll och politik.
'Summer's here and the time is right for fighting in the street' (Mick Jagger circa ´68, of course)
It's certainly right in Iraq of course where the mop-up operation continues at a pace and intensity that is going to make the silly little real war like Bill and Ben duelling for the affections of Little Weed.
But in the streets of Kensington? It has been suggested that the Back to the Cottage sympathisers get their noble buts down to Harrods and kick up a stink because Mo has blanked us. He's invested a few bob in ensuring that the Loftus Road goalmouths withstand 60 odd games next season but - as I speak (and expect that to change any day) there is no word on where Fulham might be playing in 2004-05.
We might as well use all available funds to fly a couple of hundred of us out to Washington D.C. and try to convince the Americans that pen-knives and suicide are not weapons of mass destruction. No one's listening. Just because we're right doesn't mean we're gonna win. Might is Right and in our case Right is Maybe.
Everything that has thus far been done by Back to the Cottage has been honourable and true; there has been a tacit assumption that heart and endeavour will create fervour and that fervour will inevitably spread. But it's a desperately sad fact that the very mechanisms that enable our communication and our strength - i.e. the net and the new speed at which a new product can be turned out - are at the heart of the world that stonewalls is. Fultime Magazine is the essence of this paradox. It says what 'we' think 'we' want or ought to hear almost before we've had a chance to wipe the sleep of our eyes. It is the enemy in the bed. Always willing, always informed, always smiling - the slick whore of the new world order.
Clare Short and Robin Cook have waited patiently. And now - for them - the time is right for fighting in the street. They are exposing Blair not simply as a liar but as a man who lied to all of the people all of the time. Even the new apathetic electorate will hate that - this is big time. A smile too far: America will never come out of denial but, just as we did with Thatcher, Britain will.
Dan Lampton - my friend at the local gym - has just signed as reserve keeper for Dagenham - at the age of 28. And makes me want to do my own bit of fighting in the street. I have not yet renewed my Fulham season ticket. I want to - but cash and uncertainty are holding me back. I resent the not knowing. And I'm bored with the gentle rebellion. I want to be free. As free as I was that day back in ´66 before I pledged years and years of joy and pain and cash and joy and cash and pain and joy . I want to be free to support the club I have loved. But does the club I love really exist? Is the Back to the Cottage Trust simply part of some surreal dream that is harder to believe than the day I stood silent at Craven Cottage because the chairman's son had died in a car crash with the future queen of England? Let's not forget where our dreams have been.
So let's have soon real blood - not a neatly organised moan outside Harrods - let's have new thinking - a complete reorganisation of our emotional and social ties with football and, if it has to be, a complete new beginning. Go where your heart leads you and if that's to Loftus Road, so be it, go there with love in your heart, or it's to gee see your mate play for Hayes Under-15's do that - or just go and watch the Aussies kicking it about in the park - it doesn't matter any more. I personally believe that turning away from the problem will get Fulham FC back to Craven Cottage quicker than getting into bed with the well-fed brains who play our game . If you want to fight - fight with weapons your enemy has never seen before; if you want to win - change the rules of engagement; if you want to be proved right - just wait.
[Chris Guard]
Chris är en sann mångsysslare, han skriver och sjunger låtar och är även skådespelare. Han är årskortsinnehavare på Loftus Rtd och sedan 1968 har han varit Fulham-fantast. Chris skriver för det London-baserade sportmagasinet Sportscene. Hans verk kommer även i fortsättningen synas på HammyEnd, var förberedd!
