I really started supporting QPR, at least I was faced with withdrawal symptoms when missing a game, a few years later to my initial introduction to the club. After attending a play-off final and a handful of matches in, what was called, the Football League Div.2, my early feelings of die hard support were formed in our first season back in The Coca-Cola Championship. Our first season out of the horror show. Paul Furlong was a player I could watch do practically anything to get the ball in the net, even at the ancient age of 36. A dogged central midfielder, Marc Bircham, reminded me of the out of depth footballer I was at school; Lee Cook, a tricky and gifted winger, reminded me of the talented footballer that I always wanted to be at school. Kevin Gallen, a local from the Shepherds Bush area, gave you the frail hope that a fan could somehow make his way into the eleven players in Blue and White Hoops. They were still giving away ITV/NTL Digital sets at half-time in those days. This era of QPR had no ‘great’ things about it. It was newly out of a serious threat of administration and newly into a mild threat of administration.

However, it was beyond anything that any other football club could offer me. The fans were tough and taught me how to support a football team who ultimately made you sob more than celebrate. I remember vividly sitting beside my brother whilst we politely chucked a 2-goal lead away at home to Ipswich Town. We ended up losing 4-2, despite our two goal cushion at half-time, and so it went that goal after goal was scored against us in a game which most fans saw us winning comfortably. After the game, opposing fans brawled and turned on each other outside the stadium, this again felt like a severe injustice, but QPR were just being QPR. This idea that the best/most likely team doesn’t win, or perhaps that QPR doesn’t win, is something that has stayed with me ever since that match. Never be sure. Never be certain. Not with QPR anyway. My brother was unfazed. He’d seen it all before. Even though his childhood was polished off with Sir Les Ferdinand and Trevor Sinclair, he ultimately learnt that relegation from the Premier League, and supplementary relegation even further down the tiers of English football, was a good way to grow thick skin. 

In general it would be unfair of me to complain or rant about footballing proceedings. Queens Park Rangers are fortunate, we are not Plymouth Argyle, Darlington or the late Rushden & Diamonds FC. Things could always be worse. As long as there is a club that keeps thousands of people in West London congregating on Saturday afternoons, then I’m happy. 

What I’m really trying to say is that there is the winning way, perhaps Man U or Liverpool, the losing way, Barnet or Carlisle Utd, and the QPR way. It is not just win or lose with the QPR way. It is a painful and audacious space in between those two ideas, where all dreams are both created as well as dashed simultaneously, all notions of common sense are obliterated. This can be for good and for bad. Yesterday, at 3-0 down, we couldn’t lose to Blackburn without showing our fans that we were capable of scoring two brilliant goals, but also still being inept at getting anything out the game. We lost 3-2. Why not play like that from the start and possibly have a go at winning the match? Well, that wouldn’t be very QPR would it.

This is a messy rant, but one that was bottled up yesterday. More clarity to come.