Every fan who was old enough – and fortunate enough – to experience the 2000/01 season holds it in the highest regard. But what was it like to have been in the thick of it that year?
We’ve spoken to three staff members who lived every moment of that fantastic campaign to see how it felt to be a part of the Fulham fabric as the team made history.
- Sarah Brookes was Fulham’s Head of Communications in 2000/01. She gave the best part of 20 years’ service to the Club, and was responsible for all media conducted with Jean Tigana and his players during that memorable campaign.
- Jaki Stockley is our PA to the First Team Manager, a position she’s held since Kevin Keegan was the boss. Not many worked more closely with Tigana than Jaki in 2000/01.
- Reverend Gary Piper has been our Club Chaplain for 30 years. A lifelong fan who grew up watching the likes of Johnny Haynes at Craven Cottage, the Rev is known to all at Motspur Park for his Friday visits to the office for a chat, and has become a great friend to many of our players over the years and decades.
The 1999/00 season still had six games to run when Fulham announced that Tigana would take the reins. At the time, veteran striker Karl-Heinz Riedle and former Liverpool manager Roy Evans were in charge following the departure of Paul Bracewell.

Tigana’s CV was impressive. As a player he had won the 1984 European Championship as part of a fantastic France squad alongside Michel Platini, finishing runner-up to his teammate in the Ballon d’Or voting that year.
As a manager he won Ligue 1 with Monaco in 1997 and then took them to the Champions League Quarter-Finals, but he was not one to dwell on previous achievements.
Sarah: “He wouldn’t talk about the past and never talked about himself as a player, which wasn’t without its challenges as he didn’t want to speak to the media. He’d come in and he was this footballing superstar. He’d done a great job managing Monaco, he was a hugely successful footballer. He came in with this enormous reputation for professionalism. Jean brought superstardom and that French panache, wanting to play football. That was the biggest difference, as it was so unlike anything else in Division One.”
Jaki: “I met Mark Collins, who was temporary CEO at the time, in the car park and he told me that Jean Tigana’s coming in. And I recall that he was really excited about it. Jean came in with his team and you could feel straight away that something big was happening. I don’t come from football so back then I didn’t know what I know now, but even so you could feel the buzz around the place. You could feel something in the air. Jean had an aura about him.”
Gary: “He was a world star. I remembered watching him play in that French team, so it was exciting that somebody that famous was coming.”

Any concerns that came with appointing someone unfamiliar with British football were immediately quelled. Fulham won their first 11 matches, playing a style of football never before seen on the banks of the Thames.
Gary: “Once we’d had that start, everybody’s expectation levels were high. It quickly became apparent that we were going up, once we’d started so well and we saw the way we were playing, and the strong spirit amongst the players. I remember talking to Rufus Brevett and saying how well they were playing. He was so excited by it. And I thought when an experienced pro is that excited by what they’re doing, that’s good, that’s impressive.”
Jaki: “Jean didn’t speak any English when he first arrived. He came with a guy called Philippe who was an English teacher and lived with him 24/7, battered him with English and forbade anyone from speaking to Jean in French. I think it took Jean perhaps two weeks to start putting sentences together. His command of the English language went from zero to excellent in such a short space of time, which was an incredible feat. That was an essential part of his start at the Club.”

Sarah: “We played football with a real flair. When Jean arrived there was a very British core already at the Club, so there was kind of this yin and yang, with the French philosophy and all these changes, but they all bought into his philosophy. He wanted them to only have to focus on the football, which is why Mark Maunders’ [Player Liaison Manager] role was created, so that the players didn’t have anything else to worry about other than football. And when you go and win your opening 11 games, you can’t argue with it. What they did was working, and it was so exciting to watch. I was convinced that we were going to get promoted. I had absolutely no doubt. It was nailed on, going to happen, and to do it with flair and panache was the stuff of football fairytale.”
The only negative to emerge from the season was the car accident that ultimately ended Chris Coleman’s playing career. As our captain and leader, it shook everyone at the Club.
Sarah: “That was a huge loss. I remember the phone didn’t stop ringing, and the television cameras were around, not just the sports press but the news press as well, people trying to get scoops and stories. I saw the really horrible side of journalism after he’d had his accident. Everybody loved Cookie, because he was such a massive personality around the training ground, and because he was so liked by everyone who met him. You saw what he meant to the team when Louis Saha took his shirt off after scoring, with the message ‘For Cookie.’ He eventually went into the backroom staff, because Jean wanted him in the dressing room, that’s how much of a character he was. It was awful, but Louis’ shirt said it all; they played for Cookie. There was a real resilience and strength of character from the players to get them through that, because Cookie was such a big loss.”

Jaki: “We all loved Cookie so much and knew he would never give up, and he fought to make a comeback and played a few times for the Reserves. Cookie always puts other people first. He’s just a giver, someone who has a wonderful attitude towards other people, so he still managed to help the team even when he wasn’t playing, because he was such an inspirational figure. He was in the middle of a battle himself, and he must have had some terrible, dark moments, but he was there supporting the team.”
Gary: “He was such a powerful influence on the pitch. Kit Symons said he was the best captain he’d ever played under. Sean Davis said to me a couple of years ago that it was great to play with Cookie because he was such a strong character. He was a classy player, and a big miss for us. I visited him in hospital, and then every Friday I used to spend time with him. We’d quite often lunch together, and that formed a friendship that has carried on. He was very determined. The medical staff were amazed at his courage and how hard he worked to get back. He was so brave. He so wanted to come back, he so wanted to play. And they were slightly in awe of his courage, I think. He was there and still part of it, urging people on.”
Saha’s t-shirt message of support for his teammate came on a night when emotions ran high at Ewood Park.
With Blackburn Rovers manager Graeme Souness exclaiming that his was the better side ahead of kick-off, Fulham responded with a performance full of character and grit, coming from behind with 10 men to effectively guarantee promotion on a famous Wednesday night in Lancashire.

Sarah: “There was so much camaraderie and such a great team spirit. Brev getting sent off in that game made it even sweeter. To win it in stoppage time with 10 men, and Sean getting that goal and doing his dance, it really was the best response to Souness. It was a real siege mentality of ‘we will win this here.’ Going to Blackburn and beating ‘the best team in the league’ was a sweet, sweet moment, because we were – by far – the most outstanding team. By a country mile.”
Gary: “This is very un-Christian of me, but I’ll never forget Souness saying Fulham didn’t deserve to be at the top of the table, he didn’t think we were that good. But we finished 10 points ahead of them and we got six of those points from Blackburn. That game was a battle. I was round my friend’s house because I didn’t have Sky, and he thought I was going to have a heart attack because I leapt off the sofa when Sean scored. Even Jean went running down the touchline, and he never showed any emotion. It was so unlike him.”

Jaki: “Jean understood how to get the best out of those players. He was clever, shrewd. He was tough, too, but he had the dressing room, he had their respect because of his heritage. Sean was a bit of a rebel when he was young. I remember having a conversation with him in the stairwell after he’d done something wrong and Jean was upset with him. He was like a little boy! He respected Jean massively so you just knew that he would’ve taken what he said on board, and that he was only upset with him for Sean’s own good.”
A by-product of Fulham’s success was a significant uptake in media coverage. Tigana, though, was not one for interviews, which makes your job considerably trickier if you are a Head of Communications.
Sarah: “He didn’t want anything to do with the media! And because he achieved success very quickly, it became a problem very quickly, because he didn’t want to sit down with any journalists. There is a distinct moment that I remember when he’d refused to do a post-match interview after one of our live games. I went into his room to get him, and he just wouldn’t do it, instead asking if [Assistant Manager] Christian Damiano could do it. I just started crying! I couldn’t go out and tell Sky that he’s not coming – again! And I think because no man likes to see a woman cry, he said okay! He came out and did the interview and was great. Then a couple of weeks later the same thing happened, so I thought I’d try it again. I went for a full on blub, but he just said, ‘no, no, no, these are the tears of the crocodile.’”

Fulham had been on an upward trajectory for a few years at this point, but 2000/01 was the pinnacle, as the Club returned to the Premier League for the first time in 33 years, and we returned with a swagger.
Gary: “101 points and 90 goals tells its own story. The Club had an expectation. Paul Bracewell had got sacked the previous season because we weren’t in the top-six, and that’s what the owner was expecting. We had such a great bunch of lads, they were very easy to get to know, very easy to talk with. There was a great spirit and the football they played was out of this world.”
Jaki: “We were going places. When the Chairman came into the Club he had a five-year plan, and Jean joined during that plan, and we ended up doing it within four years. We over-excelled. You really felt part of the Club as there were so few of us at that time. We were on a mission and we were all so driven. Winning, winning, winning, match after match, that momentum was just brilliant. It was sexy football.”

We’ll let Sarah have the last word here, revealing an anecdote that beautifully encapsulates Tigana’s unassuming nature.
Sarah: “He came into our office one day and said, ‘who is Hugh Grant?’ So I had to explain to Jean Tigana who this very famous actor was. Apparently, Hugh had gone up to him in a newsagents in Fulham, shook his hand and said how pleased he was to meet him, and after he left Jean asked the newsagent who the man was, because he’d never seen any of his films!”