Why do you support Fulham?

[Vinnieffc]

Why do I support Fulham ? Mainly because QPR rejected me  079.gif

But seriously, I moved to London at the age of 12 and was an Arsenal fan, and I used to go to home games at Highbury. However, my cousins who lived in Lysia Street off the Palace Road were staunch Whites, and I went to my first Fulham game with them against Spurs 1977/78ish (old 2nd division).. What struck me immediately was the friendliness of the place and the beauty of the stadium. I continued going to Highbury but realised that at Arsenal I was treated as a 'number', where as at the Cottage I was part of a family. So by the time I was 14 I was converted and have never looked back..

[malc]

Craven Cottage was the first football ground I went to in the mid 1960's,we were playing Spurs.Went with a friend and his uncle who were both Fulham fans.I was more interested in Spurs at the time to be honest(Greaves,Gilzean etc) but after setting foot inside the ground I was hooked on Fulham for life.

[Patrick]

Moved over from Ireland in the late 1980's.....Lived near Putney Heath....support the local team...

[AlexH]

Thanks everyone for some really fascinating insights. It's great to see that despite different routes into supporting Fulham, we're all so passionate about the club.

[cebu]

Born in Bayswater, but the family moved to Fulham 2 years later. So FFC was just a short walk away.

I didn't get to go until I was 14 and my older brother dragged me along for a match. I was already hooked by half time!

[CurryForMario]

The stadium for me, brilliant place to come and watch football and the atmosphere is terrific. A proper football ground.

[ealex40]

I was born in Battersea, evacuated during the war and was raised in Birmingham. My dad was a Fulham supporter and during the 1948-49 promotion season took me (age 8), to watch us play at West Brom in a blizzard. We won 2-1 and little did I know that supporting Fulham for 60-odd years was NOT going to be a stroll in the park! 049:gif

[ron]

Third generation, no choice, the club chose me via my family. And of course I'd have it no other way.

Grandad used to bunk school in the opening years of the 20thC to watch the midweek reserve games, and I remember him saying that he was lifted over the heads of the heaving crowd with other youngsters to sit on the grass to watch the defeat of Man U in the cup, 1907.

The sequence breaks with me. My daughter doesn't like the game. Oh well, I'll have to wait for grandkids to revive the family connection.

[keith]

Third generation for me too and my Son makes it Four generations.

[Holders]

Unless you are bred into a football-supporting family or have a local team, all kids cast around for a suitable team to support. Most are glory-hunters and pick one that's winning or something that will enable them to holds their heads up in the playground. That's why if you ask the kids of today it's the usual top 4 or 5.

I was just the same, that's why I picked Fulham. Sound strange? Not really, we were in the old 1st in the early 60s and Haynes was England captain so, I confess, I was a glory-hunter just like all the rest. I picked Fulham the day Haynes was carried off with a broken leg and followed the team for years before I was old enough to get to a match. It was only during those years that I realised that Fulham only just managed to stay up each year and all the other kids had picked much more successful sides than I had. Nevertheless, Fulham's location suited me as probably the closest 1st Div club to where I lived (Dorking).  

Once I eventually got to the ground it all changed. It was a real football ground with all its unique atmosphere and anachronisms. There is nowhere like it. No other team is so "Fulhamish". No other team's supporters would probably even understand the meaning of the word. I've supported Fulham in all 4 Divisions (5 if you regard the PL as different). After a while my dad started coming so I now think of myself as a 2nd generation fan. My daughter is a real Fulham fan in that she gets to games even when I don't. Her daughter, my granddaughter (now just over 3 weeks old), went to her first game (Soton away) last year even before she was born - a 4th generation fan and none of us are from Fulham. I bought her  Fulham babygrow which she was wearing when I visited last weekend. So, from Haynes' unfortunate broken leg, that's 4 generations of Fulham fans. I wouldn't have it any other way and seriously doubt that, if I'd been born near Highbury or Stamford Bridge or somewhere like that, I could ever have felt the same way about any other team. Winning all the time must get pretty boring, the ups and downs are more fun, even if traumatic at the time. As I said a few days ago on this board, enjoy the mid-table mediocrity while it lasts.

Sometimes I'd even cycle from Dorking to games, including evening ones, in dreadful winter weather getting home about 1 am. Now there's devotion/commitment/stupidity, whetever you want to call it - it's certainly not been glory-hunting!

[ScalleysDad]

Banged my head against the side of the cot. Slightly concussed even now.

[Rupert]

It's Dad's fault. He came to London in the late 50's, settled in Ealing and looked for a team to support.
Tried Brentford (nearest) first, but was made to feel unwelcome as he was not a regular, then went to QPR (second closest), but was horrified by the industrial language (being fresh out of a seminary where the family apparently had high hopes of him becoming a priest, luckily for me that fell through), then went to Fulham (third furthest away), and thank God he was made to feel very welcome by the faithful. Imagine if he had been forced to try the fourth closest! Anyway, he enjoyed the humour at the Cottage in times of troubles (multiple great escapes, at least until it all went horribly wrong in 1968) and dragged his four-year old son along to see what all the fuss was about at a reserve game, Fulham v one of the Bristol teams (he could never recall which one), which our lot won 6-0 thanks to a hat-trick by a young M Macdonald.
Dad said he remarked to an elderly fan that as the first team was having problems scoring, maybe this Macdonald should be tried out as a striker, as in the reserve game, not a full back as he had appeared in the first team up to that point. The old feller said, with worrying foresight, that we would no doubt sell him soon, which we did within a couple of weeks, to Luton and Alec Stock, who "discovered" him as a center forward. The rest is history...

[ffc73]

Grandfather, great uncles, dad, uncle, born Hammersmith Hospital but first lived off Lillee Road.  In the genes. 

Thought the link was broken with my 3 sons (none of whom are interested in football at all) but my nephew is just about hooked even though he is living down in the New Forest with my sister and her Welsh rugby loving father

[The Doctor]

It's Dad's fault.

Ditto.  The old man grew up on Napier Avenue - just round the corner from Putney Bridge tube.  He's of the generation for whom going to Chelsea one week and Fulham the next was the norm.  His dad was a staunch Chelsea supporter (you didn't hear that, right).  One day in the '50s, Dad decided that Fulham were the better footballing side and that was that.  Nearly 30 years later I got taken to my first Fulham game and have never looked back.  God knows why, it was awful.

Interestingly, my brother was also subjected to Fulham early on,  He's now a Spurs fan.  No accounting for taste...

[McBridefan1]

McBride then Dempsey... then White Witch, corked hat, fat fred, hatter don, mr Ska, Lorky, love child, my man finny, and a host of other really great people that make it impossible to leave. You don't leave a family, you might not "see" (chat with) them as much as you used to but they are always there.  049:gif  082.gif

[HatterDon]

McBride then Dempsey... then White Witch, corked hat, fat fred, hatter don, mr Ska, Lorky, love child, my man finny, and a host of other really great people that make it impossible to leave. You don't leave a family, you might not "see" (chat with) them as much as you used to but they are always there.  049:gif  082.gif

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[Baider]

I'm not sure I know any more

[bog]

My father took me down just after Johnny Haynes started playing. I wish me father had have kept the programme.

[jarv]

After today????????

[Aaron]

After today????????

Not sure myself anymore either :)

I was a "default" Manchester United supporter until I was about 11 simply because neither of my parents were into sports at all so the only option for matches to watch were United cup or European matches on ITV.  I didn't really care either way though.  Never felt any passion for them.. I always wanted to be a Fulham fan from watching Citizen Smith as a kid but in the days before internet, no access to Sky Sports and nothing but MOTD to tell me what was going on in the Premiership I couldn't actually be an active supporter.

As I got older I was basically a supporter of any British team in any competition that was televised.  Whenever I played Championship Manager and that I always picked Fulham.  I remember at about 14 or 15 actually driving past Craven Cottage on a trip to London (I live in Belfast) and getting butterflies..  I was now an official fan of a team I'd never seen kick a ball.

After that got my own gaff, Sky Sports, access to the internet, Easyjet and Ryanair.. The rest is history!

Get over to the Cottage at least 5 or 6 times a season and an away trip or two.  I can't remember the last time I missed a game either by not being there or watching it on TV.  Probably FA Cup 3rd round or something and I'd have had Gentleman Jim's commentary on anyways.

Last trip of the season coming up next week..

For what it's worth I've been to 4 games against Liverpool and we've won them all.