When Fulham last played a match
at Old Trafford as members of English football's top division, pounds, shillings
and pennies were still the national currency, Stanley Kubrick was about
to peer into the distant future with his epic film 2001: A Space Odyssey,
and England were beating Australia at cricket. In fact, it was so long ago
that political correctness had not even arrived at The Guardian.
Its match report of Fulham's trip to Manchester on 15 April 1968 said that
Allan Clarke, in missing a wonderful opportunity to put the visitors level,
'hesitated as a woman hesitates in a shop before choosing a new outfit'.
| |
|
|
| |
 |
|
| |
Johnny
Haynes leads Fulham out
33 years ago |
|
|
|
That match brought out a crowd of more than
60,000 to watch Best, Charlton, Kidd, Law et al, who were warming up for
their famous 4-1 destruction of Benfica in the European Cup final, overwhelm
the struggling London side, although not by as much as they should have
done.
The 3-0 scoreline represented 'compassion gone mad', according to the aforementioned
report. Three days earlier, Fulham had lost 4-0 to United - two goals from
Best - at Craven Cottage, a result that put the Old Trafford club back on
top of the table, overtaking Leeds, and made it impossible for Fulham to
escape relegation. And so, shortly afterwards, began more than 30 years
of scuffling in the lower divisions, an existence that might have gone on
indefinitely had it not been for the munificence of the renowned retailer
Mohamed Fayed, whose lust for self-aggrandisement, happily for Fulham, fitted
comfortably with the club's own understandable desire to improve themselves.
How long ago it was, that last 10-year stint in the top division. (There
had been only one previous one, from 1949-52.) Last Thursday, at a press
open day just across the road from Fulham's expensive training headquarters
in a south London suburb, the name of Johnny Haynes brought hardly a flicker
of recognition from the multi-national squad from which the French manager,
Jean Tigana, will choose his team for this afternoon's match at Old Trafford.
For most of us of a certain age, Haynes, who played 56 times for England,
remains what we would like to think of as the archetypal Fulham player.
Of course, he isn't. A magnificent controller of the ball and finisher,
he was much better than most of those who preceded him at Craven Cottage
and nearly all those who have followed.
Haynes made his League debut for Fulham on Boxing Day 1952 in a 1-1 draw
against Southampton and was a regular in the first team for the next 18
years. Always immaculately groomed, he was by far the club's best player
during this time and was often frustrated by the mediocrity around him.
Haynes standing with hands on hips delivering a withering stare is almost
as enduring an image as the one of him perfectly poised over the ball, right
leg drawn back ready to deliver a telling pass.
Of course, he was richly rewarded, famously becoming the first player to
be paid £100 a week after his former team-mate Jimmy Hill negotiated
the end of the £20 maximum wage. Haynes played in that 4-0 defeat
by Manchester United at Craven Cottage - 'One could feel sympathy for Haynes,
whose prodigious amount of work was allowed to go to waste' (The Guardian
again) - but was not fit enough to travel to Old Trafford three days later.
It would be misleading, though, to elevate Haynes too highly, particularly
when talking about the present Fulham team who last season, in gaining promotion
to the Premiership, displayed many of the virtues for which Haynes became
widely admired. John Collins, the admirable Scottish midfielder who was
brought to Fulham by Tigana before the start of last season, is certainly
worthy of being mentioned in the same breath as Haynes. No doubt Haynes
approved of the way Collins and his team-mates played their way out of the
First Division. 'Everybody said it couldn't be done, you couldn't pass your
way out of that division, you had to roll your sleeves up and fight to get
points,' says the 33-year-old Collins, who survives in midfield through
nimbleness and guile rather than breast-puffing posturing. 'But Jean's philosophy
is that as long as you're strong when you've got the ball that's what counts.
It's the opposition who have to fight and scrap if you keep possession.
That was our philosophy last season and I am sure it will be the same this
time.'
| |
|
|
| |
 |
|
| |
John Collins
|
|
|
|
Collins first encountered Tigana's managerial
ways at Monaco, where he played from 1996-98 having previously been with
Hibernian and Celtic. Even though he was an experienced player by then,
Collins found them formative years. 'When I played in Scotland, football
revolved around life, but when you go abroad your life revolves around football.
It's a different mentality. You're well paid, but they make sure they get
a pound of flesh off you.' It was a mentality that obviously appealed to
the industrious Collins, who had an unproductive spell at Everton when he
returned to British football and needed little persuading to join Fulham
when Tigana came in for him a little more than a year ago.
A successful combination thus far, neither Collins nor Tigana is deluding
himself that it will be as easy to finish high up in the Premiership as
it was to dominate the First Division, even with a crop of close-season
signings that includes the Dutch national goalkeeper Edwin Van der Sar and
the highly regarded France under-21 midfielder Steed Malbranque. 'Up against
better players and better teams, our concentration levels will have to be
higher,' says Collins. 'We won't be creating as many chances as we did last
season so we'll have to be more efficient as a team.'
Collins is entitled to have a more positive view of today's match at Old
Trafford than many of his team-mates, who remember the defeat they suffered
there in the fifth round of the FA Cup in February 1999. In Collins's visit
to the ground with Monaco a year earlier in the quarter-finals of the Champions
League he did an impressive policing job on David Beckham as the French
side drew 1-1 to go through on the away goal.
He is cautious, though, of expecting too much this afternoon. 'United's
strength is that everyone contributes,' he says. 'You can't just cut off
Beckham and expect to win. There's Giggs on the left-hand side, Scholes
coming through the middle - Veron will be there as well - and there are
good strikers. It's not just one specific area in which they're strong.'
Which is very much as it was 33 years ago. |