Fulham in focus: The importance of Craven Cottage

Words: Tom Reed

Images: Tom Reed

All images shot on film.

Steel dandelion floodlights popped proudly over the townhouses and the Spring warmth sat like jackets on the shoulders of drinkers at the Crabtree public house on the river.

An artist stood painting the Craven Cottage facade, with its imposing brick-work and fans milling around in that way you do when you’ve got to a football ground two hours before kick-off.

The artist joked that LS Lowry likely painted his stick figures so thinly because he couldn’t be bothered to go into detail for thousands of dawdling supporters, scratching their arses and pointing at where they should be going.

There were people from Denmark, the Netherlands and the USA, kitted out with fresh purchases from the club shop and here to see one of England’s most important football clubs but also one of its most complicated.

A club that combines modernity and history while also trying to maintain a place in one of the world’s most watched but most money-driven divisions.

One that has fans that can count their supporterhood back decades to when Fulham FC was by no means glamorous but also tourists there for a good day out but might never return.

A football ground with a slim capacity of under 30,000 during an arms race for super stadia, but occupying one of the best riverside locations in the sport.

The first thing that strikes you on entering the Hammersmith End at Craven Cottage is how nice it is, not airport lounge nice like the Spurs stadium but how Fulham have washed away a lot of the unpleasantness of how football used to be.

There’s an inbuilt masochism in the “against modern football movement” in that it feels wrong to have good things in a sport that used to treat supporters like farmyard animals and herd them into pens.

At Fulham you can have a pint next to the river, drinking a beer you haven’t queued that long for, the concourse is the original going back years and the toilets have that tightness and familiar stickiness that prompts memories of days gone by.

©Tom Reed/ Terrace Edition. Beers by the river. Fulham FC.

The seats on the Hammersmith End are spacious and you can really take in what a notable venue for sport you’re spending an afternoon in.

But the seats come at a price, leading, in a typically Fulham way, not to revolution but reasonable street-level messaging towards the club.

In 2023, supporters marched down the Stevenage Road to Craven Cottage, with a banner reading “We can’t afford to price out fans”.

The message was to the point, with Dan Crawford of the independent Fulham fans’ website “The Hammy End” eloquent in summing up the fans’ disappointment, especially with the ticket pricing for the visit of Manchester United.

Speaking to the Evening Standard, Crawford said “There’s an issue with the season ticket prices, but the big issue is about season ticket prices. But the big issue is about match ticket prices. Matchday prices for this game ranged for an adult ticket from £67 if you’re lucky to £160. It’s a Premier League record [price]”.

I caught up with Dan Crawford on Saturday and from the friendly greetings he gets from supporters and staff, it’s clear he is less a Craven Cottage Corbyn and more a guy that wants to make sure no-one is forgotten.

Indeed, it doesn’t take a particularly charitable level of conscience to understand that Fulham have a responsibility to strive for the highest level of football but to also look after the fans that sustained the club through its leaner years, where results were harder to come by and much of the ground didn’t even have a roof.

Fulham's Craven Cottage is about to undergo a transformation with a new Riverside Stand. Here are some pics of the ground in April 2002, before the last refurbishment that saw it become an all-seater and new roofs at both ends of the ground. pic.twitter.com/cEcoZX1KBX
— Paul Groundtastic (@paul_gtastic) July 21, 2019

Of course, Fulham and Hammersmith, despite boasting some of the most expensive real estate in London, isn’t without its areas of deprivation and there needs to be as much effort into breaking down pound coin pile barriers to going to Fulham matches that take into account people that simply can’t afford it.

Fulham Supporters’ Trust recently wrote to the club’s CEO, on their concern that the ”family club nature of Fulham is now under threat” and asking for season ticket prices to be be frozen for 25/26.

If we understand Fulham’s importance as a club that represents the best of the modern game, with a strong understanding of its history, then it follows that it is significant that the ecosystem of club and community is healthy.

It wouldn’t take so much as a pivot as a well-placed through ball to make a modest investment in safe-standing and then releasing a chunk of £20 tickets for the young supporters who make the racket.

It’s all very well to have Moncler puffer rustling when a goal goes in but you need some Reebok Classic stomping as well.

Of course, Fulham exist in the larger Premier League biosphere and it might need a wider agreement on accessibility based on price, for things to move.

On the “tourist issue” it’s worth remembering that groundhopping is now a global industry in which many fans partake, including this writer. We can’t look down our nose at people who go to the match to celebrate the heritage and fan culture of clubs and have travelled miles to do it.

But English football can have a conversation on progressive routes to inclusivity such as a small tourist levy on overseas ticket purchases akin to a city tax contributing to a wider understanding on a “living ticket price” for people who live in in the communities where clubs are located.

Fulham are so close to being a club we can all get behind.

They will find it difficult to compete with the super-clubs owned by nation states but can be a happy outfit that continue to attract pilgrims of admiration, not just for the good looking ground but because of innovative schemes to improve inclusivity at the wonderful home on the river.