Fulham 1, Wanderers 1 THERE are times, Sam Allardyce admitted after seeing his team hammered 4-1 by Blackburn, that you just have to hold up your hands and admit you've been beaten by a better side, writes Gordon Sharrock

At half-time at Craven Cottage yesterday, it looked like Wanderers were about to go down to an even better team, possibly by an even wider margin!

But a goal out of the blue from Per Frandsen, a couple of top drawer saves from Tommy Wright and a spirited muck or nettles performance left Fulham frustrated and let Rovers and Birmingham know that, if they want that second automatic promotion place, they're going to have to fight like fury to get it.

It was only a point and the purists will pontificate that it was one they didn't deserve but, in terms of the character it required and the confidence it instilled, it was worth its weight in gold.

Those who had charted Wanderers' downfall in recent weeks - they had won just one of their previous five league games - and seen their nearest rivals turn up the heat over the previous 48 hours (Birmingham beating Watford, Rovers getting the better of West Brom) would have been all too eager to hammer another nail in their play-off coffin.

But they refused to roll over and, putting it bluntly, they got stuck in. Never mind the technical jargon of the coaching manuals, Wanderers earned themselves a draw because they chased and harassed, ruffled a few feathers and, yes, they put their boots in where it hurt!

They knocked Fulham out of their free-flowing, confident stride ... because they simply had no choice.

Any team that allows Jean Tigana's men to play is asking for trouble and that's precisely what Wanderers did in the first half. It was no contest, one-way traffic and, when Barry Hayles broke the deadlock three minutes before the interval, not even the most bigoted Boltonian could claim it wasn't the least they deserved.

Wanderers hadn't just met their match; they'd come up against a team that will not only play in the Premiership next season, they will grace it.

But, as Allardyce said before and after this trip to SW6, this is the stage of the season when results are what matters, not performances.

And yesterday Wanderers proved that they are capable of getting a result against the best.

If there were any doubts about their character after they'd capitulated so tamely in the derby duel with Blackburn, there shouldn't be now - not after the passion they generated in the second half.

Paul Warhurst, Colin Hendry and Robbie Elliott all tackled their way into yellow card trouble - in Elliott's case so ferocioulsy that Luis Boa Morte lost his cool completely, committing one of the gravest of sins - spitting in an opponent's face - and was duly dismissed.

The more they competed, the more tempers boiled over - to the point where Frandsen and Hendry squared up to each other over what the Dane saw as a needlessly conceded corner!

This point mattered - even if it meant taking a team-mate to task. Had they not shown that fervour, Fulham might have run amok. Allardyce, missing John O'Kane and Kevin Nolan through suspension and, perhaps more significantly, Ricardo Gardner through injury, had gone with a safety first approach - no pretentions, five in midfield and with Dean Holdsworth operating as a lone striker.

But they couldn't stop Tigana's midfield quartet of John Collins, Lee Clark, Simon Davis and Bjarne Goldbaek running the show and offering 24-goal top scorer Louis Saha and Hayles all the encouragement they needed to use their pace to force a succession of corners - each one posing its own particular threat.

Simon Charlton cleared one Saha header off the line, Holdsworth desperately hacked a loose ball away after Wright - making his debut in preference to Steve Banks - got his timing wrong and, when Hendry failed to clear, Collins smashed a close-range shot against the post.

Hayles' 18th goal of the season was justly deserved. The newly-capped Jamaican international had been the major threat and, although it was a lucky first touch that wrong footed Hendry, his turn and shot were the hallmarks of a top class striker.

"You're just too good to be true!" the Fulham fans sang and they had every right. You feared the worst in the second half and, when Wright had to produce an acrobatic one-handed save to keep out a Symons header just after the break, the signs weren't good.

But Holdsworth can always be a nuisance - even when he is operating alone - and when he coaxed Andy Melville into conceding a free kick, up stepped Frandsen to curl one of his "specials" over the wall and wide of Maik Taylor, just inside the post for his sixth goal of the season.

It transformed the game. Fulham still called the shots but they weren't having it all their own way any more. Collins hit the woodwork for a second time when he chipped a shot onto the crossbar after Wright had charged down Saha's close-range free kick but only moments earlier Holdsworth had a penalty appeal rejected when he went down under a challenge from Symons.

Allardyce was disappointed that his players didn't make more of the extra-man advantage after Boa Morte had been given his marching orders.

Suggesting Wanderers might have won it is stretching it a bit but he wouldn't have been embarrassed in the slightest if they'd come away with all three points.

They're having to tough it out at the moment and they don't care if it's pretty or not, just as long as it's effective.