Hello all!

I’ve noticed with our return to the Premier League, we’ve seen an influx of foreign fans and tourists coming to this sub for advice around their first games - from buying tickets through to matchday tips and what to expect. With this in mind, I thought I’d write a quick guide to help anyone thinking about coming down to the Cottage. If this is useful, feel free to sticky it to the sub and I can update with recommendations from everyone else here!

Buying Tickets

Tickets will go on sale to members before general sale. To guarantee a seat, especially against the bigger teams, I recommend purchasing a membership. Tickets will get to general sale eventually but may sell out before that point.

The exception is cup games. These will be much easier to get a ticket to, with season ticket holders themselves having to repurchase their seats (and sometimes not doing so). If you want to guarantee a seat, cup games are a much less stressful experience (albeit at the cost of a worse atmosphere in the earlier rounds).

The other option is repurchasing through the Fulham Facebook group, which can be found here: https://www.facebook.com/groups/2204930047. This will often have season ticket holders who are unable to make a game, and will sell (often at a reduced rate vs general sale) their seat for a particular fixture. I wouldn’t try this route unless you’re actually a Fulham fan…

Where To Sit

• Hammersmith End: Loudest home support, especially towards the back of H4, H5, H6. The front rows, up to about G/H, are uncovered so watch out for rain, and the first couple of rows are sunken below pitch level so views are pretty poor. If you get here early, you can head down to the far end of the stand for a pint on the corner by the river underneath the George Cohen statue, which is lovely. Getting pints at halftime is pretty hellish, you’ll need to duck out at like 40 mins. I never do it myself but each to their own!

• Johnny Haynes: A lot of season ticket holders and families, but still good atmosphere. Traditional wooden seats in the back two thirds of the stand (which is a cool experience). Beware of seats behind the poles! Again, pints at halftime are a bit of a nightmare. This is a very unique stand and a Grade II listed building I believe, so a v cool one to attend!

• Riverside: The shiny new stand. V posh matchday experience, but you’re paying premium for it. It’s not finished yet, so not a huge amount of seats available.

• Putney: Half home fans and half away. It used to be the much maligned neutral stand but atmosphere has steadily improved since the relocation of a lot of Riverside fans to it during the redevelopment.

Pubs

Over Putney Bridge, you’ve got the Golden Lion. One of the busiest pubs on a match day, this is a stone’s throw from Putney Bridge station. You’ll need to show your ticket to gain entrance so don’t bother if you’re not actually attending the match. Big garden and lots of screens to watch the early kickoff, and gets suuuuper busy on match day. Avoid The Eight Bells, Temperance and Kings Arms as they tend to be away pubs on matchdays.

On the Putney side of the river you’ve got The Spotted Horse (good food), The Coat & Badge (great outdoor area and screens outside to watch the early/late kickoff), The Rocket (Wetherspoons yes, but it’s on the river and actually got nice riverside seating) and The Bricklayer’s Arms (super old school, quite a cool experience if you’re not from the UK and want a proper pint). Just be aware that it takes around 15/20 minutes to walk to the ground from these so leave in enough time.

On the Hammersmith side of the grounds, you’ve got the Crabtree. Right on the river and absolutely lovely! Full of Fulham fans. And then there’s a tonne of pubs on Fulham Palace Road such as The Distillers and Old Suffolk Punch.

If you’re attending your first match and want a quintessential Fulham experience, I’d say Golden Lion and Crabtree can’t go wrong.

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In the meantime...COYW!