CHAOS AT THE COTTAGE
While the bulk of Fulham’s support is comprised of working-class folk who like a pie and a pint of foaming shaft as much as the next match-goer, the club’s Thames-adjacent postcode of Craven Cottage means fans have never been able to shake their undeserved reputation for being a bunch of well-heeled, upper class popinjays with more of a predilection for half-time hummus washed down by a flute or two of expensive champagne. Their case certainly isn’t helped by the fact that the Fulham ticket office is invariably the most obliging port of call for foreign tourists hoping to tick “Attend A Premier League Match” off their bucket lists, or that the ground’s go-to celebrity camera cut-away during televised games is the raffish fop and professional posho that is acting’s Hugh Grant.
In what looked like a cynical attempt to lean into their status as the quintessential club for football fans with no particular interest in actual football, last season Fulham threw open the doors of their new Riverside Stand. While the club’s owner, Shad Khan, described this giant overpriced hospitality suite, which just happens to have pitch-facing seats tacked on to one side, as “a location like no other, a real game-changer for Fulham Football Club”. It immediately became the butt of jokes that high rollers who paid through the nose to wine and dine in its many posh eateries would not have to sully their eyes by looking at the pitch, when the windows opposite offered a far more aesthetically pleasing view of the River Thames.