Fulham 3 Huddersfield Town 1

Oh the pain.......

7th May 2000..Fulham 3 Huddersfield Town 0..Town slip from the play off places where they has spent all season, to 8th place. The massed ranks of town fans filled the open end at Craven Cottage only to be bitterly disappointed at how such a promising season had crumbled away to nothing...
Even with this defeat had Bolton and Wolves failed to win their final games we would still have made 6th place, but they both won 1-0.

This heralded the end of Rubery era, we'd already lost Marcus Stewart in controversial circumstances..and worse was to follow....much worse.

Town really blew it by losing at home to Stockport the week before, a win would have secured a play off place regardless of the result at Fulham..but no, we lost both games.

To rub salt into the already gaping wounds of Town fans, the following season we contrived to get relegated by losing our last game (again) at home to Birmingham as other clubs around us again won. And to add to the irony Fulham ran away with the league title with 101 points and got promoted to the Premier league.

So followed 11 years of pain..down to the fourth division and 8 years stuck in division 3...oh , the pain !

BUT, here we are again, face to face with a Fulham side and back to square one, where we all were 14 years ago.

This will be our 29th visit to Fulham, and we've only won 5 times..so not a happy hunting ground. Meanwhile Fulham , who had to come back from 0-2 last night at home to bottom club Blackpool, are not the force they were back in the Premier League days and sit in 21st place on 16 points.

On Saturday Town will be taking some 2,700 fans with them, some of the old hands will be looking for some kind of closure of the events from 7th May 2000..others just going for a good day/weekend out.

How will Town react after defeat at Derby ?..that will be the question..

Fulham have played at the 'cottage' since 1896 but former chairman Henry Norris rejected a proposal by a local businessman to move from Craven Cottage to spare ground in Chelsea..so the local businessman decided to form his own club on that land which is known now as Stamford Bridge and the new club of course, Chelsea.

Fulham were also the first club to sell hot dogs at a match in 1926..

Let's hope our Terriers are hot on Saturday !


Over to you guys.............