SEEN AND NOT HEARD

Sunday 30th January 2011 (F.A. Cup Fourth Round)

Fulham 4 (Murphy (pen.) 11, Murphy (pen.) 14, Hangeland 23, Dembele 45+3) Tottenham Hotspur 0

Attendance: 21,829

Having missed the last home game against Stoke City to attend my brother-in-law's funeral, I returned to Craven Cottage to find a change in staff deployment procedures that were, to put it mildly, a shambles, with a new system in place that drastically slowed down the signing-in process that all stewards have to do before each game, meaning that we were randomly allocated our positions before heading to the Cottage.

Unfortunately, I got lumbered with the "Undercroft Exit" position, a placement under the stand across from the Police Room which meant that I could not see anything of the game whatsoever and, worst of all, could hear the fans sitting above me in the Putney End, oohing and aahing at the ebb and flow of the game, leaving me to only guess what was happening on the pitch.

Before the game, I was able to chat to a few of the fans, and even saw one who I'm pretty sure was vaguely famous. One North American supporter handed in a wallet that he found, which was good of him, so I immediately took it to my supervisor, earning me some bonus points that, hopefully, would get me back in a vomitory for the next game.

Another foreign fan, this time from Norway, turned up with a huge smoked salmon for compatriot and Fulham defender Brede Hangeland and asked me if he could get it to him. As he was sitting near the player's tunnel, I suggested he ask one of the stewards near the tunnel to see if they could get it to Fulham's favourite Norwegian. The salmon wasn't the only non-human in the stand today, as I spotted a mouse dashing across the undercroft at one point.

Once the game kicked off, I noticed some water dripping through from the stand above. Suspecting it was just someone's spilled drink, I thought I should report it, just to be on the safe side, which meant I used the Emergency Phones for the first time. As it happened, it was just a spilled drink.

In the event, working in the undercroft wasn't quite as bad as I feared, though I wouldn't want to do it too often in the future.