On Saturday April 27 2002 and after 105 years, Fulham fans watched what they thought would be the Whites’ last League game at Craven Cottage in its existing guise, expecting to return to a brand new stadium built in its place on the banks of the Thames.
The drab 0-0 draw against an already relegated Leicester was reflective of the mood of the 21,106 fans present who prepared their last goodbyes before the bulldozers moved in.
As the crowds spilled out of the ground on that spring afternoon, the uninspiring but necessary prospect of a season-long ground share with QPR lay ahead. The reasons for the move were two-fold.
Firstly the Club needed to comply with the Taylor report that followed the Hillsborough disaster of 1989. The report declared that all First Division and Premier League clubs must play in all-seater stadiums in order to reduce the risk of a repeat of the tragedy in Sheffield. Fulham had already played two seasons in Division One and a further season in the Premiership at Craven Cottage – a ground with two large standing terraces at each end - and in doing so had used up their period of three years grace granted by the football licensing authorities.
Secondly, the archaic and limited facilities at Craven Cottage simply did not provide the revenue-generating capabilities required by a club with Premiership ambitions. Not only did the stadium have insufficient capacity, it was also severely lacking in hospitality and retail facilities. Consequently, in 1999 plans were unveiled for a brand new state-of-the-art 30,000 all-seater stadium to be built on the existing Craven Cottage site.
In order to have the new stadium built and open in time for the season following the year-long ground share, demolition work was scheduled to begin almost immediately after the afore-mentioned Leicester game. However, due to a combination of opposition from local residents and a series of planning-related issues, the protracted planning process for the new stadium had, by this time, been running for three years.
The complexities of building a suitably sized stadium on a site surrounded by a park, river and housing, not to mention a host of environmental and aesthetic concerns, had made the entire process incredibly challenging. Nevertheless, with planning permission granted, all was on schedule for a return to the new stadium within a year.
However, almost immediately, the already tight schedule for demolition and construction ran into difficulties. The Fulham Alliance, the residents’ pressure group opposing the new development, launched an appeal insisting that the plans should not have been approved by the Local Authority, suggesting instead that the proposed new stadium should have been brought in front of Government Office of London for approval.
The additional bureaucracy – undoubtedly just a stalling tactic by the Fulham Alliance – made a return to the new stadium after just a season at Loftus Road impossible, and as a consequence, the ground share became a two-year proposition.
A further series of appeals followed, and while the ultimate results of such actions went in favour of the Club, the Alliance achieved their immediate goal of preventing work beginning. In the meantime, both the building and legal costs relating to the new development continued to rise way beyond initial figures, with new estimates topping the £100million mark.
Consequently, it came as no surprise when the Club announced that it was abandoning the new stadium project. Some time after this - December 2003 to be precise - plans were unveiled for £8million worth of major refurbishment work at the existing Craven Cottage to bring it in line with Premiership requirements.
With planning permission granted, work began in earnest in January 2004 in order to meet the deadline of the new Premiership season. Fulham played their first game in the new-look 22,000 all-seater stadium in a pre-season friendly against Watford on July 10 2004.
The Craven Cottage pitch measures 100m x 68m.