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The Championship kicks off this weekend, and I’m faced with supporting a club in second tier English football from the other side of the world.
I wouldn’t have it any other way.
In 2009, I fell off a plane at Heathrow and into a life in the antipodean heartland of SW6, London.
I had to do a lot of things when I arrived: find a place to live, a job, and visit the Walkie to have a snakebite. But the most important thing I had to do was find a football team.
Like most Australians around my age I had a certain affection for Liverpool, due to their exposure Down Under and the inclusion of several Aussies in their ranks throughout the years.
Sure, I could keep following Liverpool, or I could choose one of the football clubs in the capital to pledge my allegiance to.
Chelsea were just down the road, but I hated the way they’d bought the league a couple of years before, Arsenal were overpriced, Tottenham were too far north, Millwall too far east and QPR was QPR.
And so it was, for the princely sum of 10 quid, that I went to my first game of football in London at Craven Cottage, by the river Thames, to watch the Whites take on Roma in a midweek Europa League Cup tie.
The atmosphere was hardly electric, but the die-hards up the back of the Johnny Haynes kept singing the whole time.
Fulham were never a glamour choice. More or less rooted to the bottom half of the Premier League table, the Whites had enjoyed a decade of relative success in the top-flight thanks largely to flamboyant owner Mohamed Al-Fayed, of Harrod’s fame.
Throughout my time in London I made plenty of bad choices, but choosing to support Fulham was not one of them.
Over the next two years I attended many Fulham games and some were spectacular. Clint Dempsey’s goal to secure a 4-1 win against Juventus to advance to the quarter-final of the 2009-10 Europa League is seared into my memory. For a club that after 135 years could only boast an Intertoto Cup to its name, and for the fans that’d turned up week after week for their entire lives, that night was Wonderland.
Joy resonated around the entire ground, it was electric and infectious, and I’ve yet to experience a sporting atmosphere that has come close to it.
Of course, some games were less spectacular. A 0-2 loss at home to Aston Villa on a bitterly cold, grey Sunday afternoon in January as wind whipped into the stands and Roy Hodgson slumped deeper and deeper into the manager’s chair comes to mind.
After I left London in 2011 I continued to support Fulham. Being a Premier League team meant their games were televised, sometimes at ideal times if they happened to be playing one of the bigger clubs.
And then last year happened. The club was sold by Al-Fayed to Shahid Kahn. Loss piled up after loss. Manager after manager got the sack. Deep into February I continued to believe we were too good to be relegated.
We weren’t. Down we went, and here we are.
To make matters worse, Fulham has basically jettisoned its entire team due to their Premier League-level wages. Playing in the Championship means the club will barely get a mention anywhere but niche Championship football websites, and unless I find a dodgy interned feed somewhere, my chances of actually seeing any vision of the Whites playing are close to zero.
But I will not be deterred. Buoyed by the signing of Socceroo Adam Taggart, Scottish striker Ross McCormack, and the emergence of Moussa Dembélé version 2.0, my love for the Whites is stronger than ever!
So you can keep your Man U, your Chelsea, City and Arsenal. You can keep your top-shelf football and your glamour signings, your televised games and your easy access to news.
I’ll stick with my little club in SW6, toiling away in the Championship, hoping the penance we serve down there only lasts one season and that the mighty Whites will be promoted again in May.
Besides, who says we can’t do the FA Cup/Championship double?
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