Well the impossible happened and the Sky Blues won 3-1 at Craven Cottage on Sunday with an exhilarating performance that thrilled the travelling Sky Blue Army and left the West London club's fans, expecting to see an easy home victory, in total shock. In what was surely one of the club's best results since Mark Robins returned to the club in 2017, the team were on the front foot from the start and fully deserved the win.
As a wrote last week it was City's first league game at Craven Cottage since 1968 and in the intervening years Fulham have not only built a stand on the river side of the ground but also demolished it. A new replacement stand on that side of the ground is just about ready and will surely be full next season in the Premier League. I hope Fulham buy some new defenders before then or they will be in for some embarrassing thumpings in the top league.
It was only City's fourth league win in 17 visits to the Cottage with the last win coming in a meaningless midweek game in April 1948 thanks to goals from Plum Warner and Alex McIntosh. Sunday's win also ensured that City completed the double over Fulham – the first club to achieve that this season – and only the second time Fulham have conceded more than two goals in a game, the other being in the earlier fixture at the CBS Arena. Yet again City scored an added-time goal – their 11th of the season. I understand this is one short of the divisional record but have no other details.
Sunday's game was admirably refereed by Keith Stroud, an impressive official in this league where so many refs are inconsistent and give talented players little protection. Stroud has refereed four City away games and was the man in black in the wins at Blackpool, Peterborough and Fulham with a draw at Millwall. He also officiated in the home defeat to West Brom (he missed the handled second Baggies goal) and the home draw with Preston (rightly adding time on for time-wasting tactics by the visitors).
Keith Ballantyne enjoyed the trip down the 1968 memory lane last week and reminded me that Ernie Hunt played in that game at Fulham in April 1968 – his third appearance at the ground that season having appeared for Wolves on the opening day before an early season move to Everton took him back to the Cottage in September. He joined City in March just in time to play there for a third time in the 1-1 draw.
Jacqui Crump asked me for information about a relative of her husband, John Wassall, who played for Coventry City in the 1950s. John Charles Wassall was born in Erdington, Birmingham on 9 June 1933. He was on Coventry's books as an apprentice from around 1949 playing in their Modern Machine Tools team in local Coventry leagues alongside many other talented youngsters on the club's books at that time.
John Wassall
He became a regular in the reserve team in the Football Combination in 1953 and over the next four seasons he made 126 appearances for the reserves, the majority at centre half. He got his first team chance in September 1955 at Reading in a Division Three South game (1-0 defeat) as a full back. He made 11 appearances in the first team that season at full-back and a further six the following season. He was released in the summer of 1957 and signed for Southport, then a Division Four team. His stay in Lancashire was brief - he played four games before joining non-league Bromsgrove Rovers in late 1957. I don't have any details of his career after that but believe he died at Rowington near Warwick in 1987, aged 54.
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