Game Forty Five - West Ham v Fulham (Premiership)

18 January 2009

Random game number two of 2009 and one that I was quietly looking forward too. After seeing films like Green Street, West Ham United seem to have acquired a rough reputation but to me the films had left me with a sense of local pride in the team. A local team supported by local people - a proper club so to speak.

I dragged myself away from the other half at about 8am and headed over to Nottingham train station to travel back to Leicester in order to catch my designated train to the capital. The streets were deserted at that time of day and that was hardly a suprise with the bitter cold wind sweeping through the city.
Got the train from Leicester station to London at 9:20 and was soon on the underground and heading to Leicester Square to meet up with Helen... or so was the plan except that thanks to repair works on the lines, I seemed to be travelling in every direction except for where I needed to go! Nightmare.
Finally found her 15 minutes later than I intended and we headed straight down to the tube to head off to Upton Park. As we got closer and closer to our stop, the cockney accents got stronger and stronger and I had to laugh when I overheard one phone conversation including the phrases "Faaaack off you caaant" and "Jag on you maaag" - the most sterotypical think you can say in this area and thats exactly what we heard.

Headed down Green Street until we made it to the ground and headed straight in past the most lack security in the world compared to Palace the other night. The guy asked to look in my bag (which was full of random crap from spending the night in Notts), took one look and waved me in. If this was Selhurst Park then I reckon the contents of the bag would have been rummaged through and my dirty boxers would have been displayed to the world! Such a contrast.

Made our way up to our seats and were instantly blinded by the sun as we became used to our surroundings. Cracking ground this - the away fans below us, the two big screens giving replays and a concourse reminiscant of Filbert Street back in the good old days.

We took the opportunity for the classic random game picture as we normally do ... they are all starting to blend into one though and this one looks oddly like the one from Lincoln last season. Weird.

As the teams came out, the moment I'd personally been waiting for came about as the fans all stood and sand "I'm Forever Blowing Bubbles" one of my favourite football songs and sounded so much better than the disappointing "YNWA" at Anfield last month.

The game kicked off to quite a roar and the sounds of "Fuck off Craig Bellamy" rang out around the ground in response to the striker who has turned his back on West Ham to join the revolution at Manchester City. They made sure that he wasn't missed right from the start though and six minutes in, a cross was chested back towards goal by Pantsil only for Di Michele to race in and intercept before passing it into the empty net. Great start.

West Ham were well on top at this stage and pushed forward constantly looking for a second goal. Some neat passing and build up play was only let down by the strikers as Di Michele in particular was guilty of missing a couple of half chances by some distance.

Having offered nothing going forward, Fulham suddenly found themselves level in brilliant circumstances. Paul Konchesky, playing against his former club, picked up the ball inside his own half and started moving forward. When he was 35 yards out, he lashed it forward like a rocket with his left foot and from where we were sat, we could see it swerve into the top corner past Robert Green. Amazing goal.

Not much else happened after that in the first half. Green remained untested and for all of West Ham's neat build up play, the visiting defence held firm and wouldnt let them through.

Neither team could really get going for the first few minutes of the second half but a long ball was miss-controlled by the Fulham defence and Carlton Cole stole the ball and stormed forward towards goal only to be brought down by Konchesky when he was about to pull the trigger. Clear penalty and the only suprise was that the defender stayed on the pitch.

Mark Noble stepped up and confidentally fired it past the keeper to put the Hammers back into the lead.

The West Ham fans were brilliant throughout and were having some fantastic banter with the Fulham fans. They loved to taunt the away following about how they were sitting down throughout the game and even started singing "Stand up if you love Fulham" to give them a helping hand. When this caught on and the away fans finally find their feet, the chants soon changed to "Sit down, shut up" which oddly the Fulham fans did much to everyones amusement! "You only do what we tell you" soon followed as the entertainment in the stands matched that on the pitch.

The penalty inspired West Ham and they soon continued to seal the game with a third goal. Neat counter attacking football creating several chances and it was from one such attack that the game was wrapped up. Collison picked the ball up and threaded a delightful ball through to Di Michele who timed his ball through to Cole perfectley leaving him with the simple task of slotting past Schwarzer. A great goal to finish off a very entertaining game.

When the final whistle went, we made our way out of the ground and round the front of the stadum to have a proper look around. The club shop was less than exciting and there wasn't exactly much to do round there so we soon headed back to Upton Park tube station and back towards central London.

With a couple of hours to kill before our respective trains back to the midlands, we decided to do the tourist thing and spent some time wandering around the capital taking some cool pictures of the sights in the fading light.

After a bit of time around the Southbank we made our way to Trafalgar Square (stopping off to take some silly photos including "going into the map" like Joey did in friends - so childish) and then onto Buckingham Palace with me doing impressions of the Queen all the way there.

Needless to say she wasn't at home to visitors so we hung out there for a bit, watching the guards march in the dark and taking silly pictures of us pretending to be statues - they can all be found on my facebook page if you're interested.

And with that, we headed back to the tube and back to our stations - me to St Pancras and Helen to Euston Street. It was really nice to spend some proper time together as our adventures following Leicester appear to have been quite limited so far this season and it's only our random games that we see each other for more than a few minutes.

With that, it was back to Leicester and a quiet night at home to prepare for a night in Yeovil on the open terraces... forecast says cold with heavy rain .... joy!