Fulham 0 Stoke City 1

For me, this match was mostly about Stoke's 6 foor 7 inch striker Peter Crouch. He is one of my father's favourite footballers. I think this is mainly because he represents a throwback to the football of his youth, which was often based on getting the ball forward to a big "target man". Target men don't come much bigger than Crouch. There's also something brilliantly incongruous about watching a man of his height on a football field, like watching a giraffe attempt to rollerskate or a hippopotamus doing data entry.

Crouch scored the only goal of the match in the 33rd minute, turning the ball home from about eight yards out. He was somewhat fortunate to evade a red card for two sliding challenges, but the problem with being that height is that sliding challenges last twice as long. Nonetheless there was a modicum of justification for the "you dirty lanky bastards" chant eminating from the Hammersmith End.

Fulham rallied in the second half and should really have taken the game to extra time at least. With 20 minutes to go, the ball arrived to Ross McCormack five yards out at the back post from an excellent Ben Pringle cross. All he needed to do was prod the ball in a straight line to equalise, but somehow contrived to stab it into the grateful arms of Shay Given.

It felt like the match's defining moment and so it proved, in spite of continued late pressure from the home side. In football, as in life, you don't always get what you deserve.