Fulham, cynical, niggly and belligerent, had Papa Bouba Diop and Andy Cole sent off. First to go was Diop on the hour. As teammate Mark Pembridge prepared to take a corner, he slugged Darren Purse with a rabbit punch.
Then, with five minutes remaining, Albion’s Neil Clement was ejected for scything Luis Boa Morte as the Portugal international charged for goal. In the subsequent melee, Cole threw myriad punches and referee Mike Dean had an unwanted hat-trick.
“It was a little bit tally-ho,” Albion manager Gary Megson said. His Fulham counterpart, Chris Coleman, was unrepentant. “I won’t be fining them. Diop was sent off for reacting to a coward’s challenge on him by Purse. We were coming off three successive defeats: I want my boys to stand up for themselves,” he said.
The game simmered long before it erupted, and only last-ditch resistance from Moritz Volz twice prevented Nwankwo Kanu from scoring his first goal for Albion. But the German then turned villain, when from Jonathan Greening’s cross, Volz decided to punch Earnshaw’s header away. Having learnt a lesson from Arsenal last week, Fulham protested long and loud, and Collins John and Edwin van der Sar were cautioned. The gamesmanship reaped its reward as Earnshaw lifted the penalty over the bar.
In the second half Fulham defended more adroitly, and with Cole as willing as he was in his pomp, they began to threaten debutant goalkeeper Tomasz Kuszczak, in for the flu-ridden Russell Hoult.
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Once Diop was off, Fulham’s 10 men played as if they were 12. Adam Green sped down the left and his low cross found Cole, who slid in to poke home past Kuszczak. Again Albion rallied, and in the 88th minute, Kanu scored the equaliser his contribution warranted with a glancing header from Jason Koumas’s corner. The spoils were shared then, but the shame was more unevenly distributed.
“A busy day,” concluded referee Dean. He will be reporting Fulham to the FA for “harassment” over several of yesterday’s incidents.
STAR MAN: Nwankwo Kanu (West Brom)
Player ratings. West Bromwich Albion: Kuszczak 6, Scimeca 6, Robinson 6 (Albrechtsen 25min, 5 (Gera 72min, 5)), Gaardsoe 5, Purse 5, Koumas 5, Greening 5, Johnson 6 (Dyer 66min, 5), Clement 7, Kanu 7, Earnshaw 6
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Fulham: Van Der Sar 6, Volz 7, Knight 5, Pearce 5, Green 7, Diop 4, Pembridge 6, Boa Morte 6, Legwinski 6, John 5 (Radzinski 57min, 7), Cole 7
Scorers: West Bromwich Albion: Kanu 88
Fulham: Cole 72
Referee: M Dean
Attendance: 24,128