Back in season 1973/74 Queens Park Rangers arrived at the Dell for what was then seen as a battle for a UEFA Cup place, how quickly things changed.
After the trip to eventual champions Leeds United on January 12th a game in which Saints lost narrowly 2-1 in a season when the Yorkshire club were at that stage undefeated, Saints fans had high hopes that the visit of Queens Park Rangers would be the day that we found our form again,a month earlier we had been 5th in the table, but a run of poor results over Xmas and New year had seen us slip to 10th, Leeds as mentioned were running away with it and lead the table with 34 points from Liverpool in second with 34, only five points however (dont forget this was in the days of only two for a win) seperated Burnley in 3rd and Coventry in 12th, we sat as I said in 10th with QPR in 5th place on 28, in short a good win could take us right back up the table.
A healthy crowd of 22,689 rolled up at the Dell on the 19th January 1974 including a good QPR contingent hoping to see two sides who not only scored more than most but conceded just as many too.
One new face in the Saints team was new £50,000 signing from Gillingham David Peach, Lawrie McMenemy's first signing as Saints boss and Peach took his place as substitute that day for the first time, the initiative was taken first by Saints when Mick Channon raced clear and latched on to a Terry Paine through ball to put the home side one up.
The drama wasn over though when in the 43rd minute Saints keeper Eric Martin saved a penalty, only for the crowd to go mad as the referee ordered it to be retaken, but Martin was not to be beaten and again saved the second attempt.
As the game enetered its final 20 minutes it was starting to look like the home side might take all two points, but then with 19 minutes to go, Thomas equalised for the visitors who now had the attacking initiative and five minutes later they had another penalty as Jim Steele brought down Stan Bowles and this time Gerry Francis made no mistake from the spot to put Rangers 2-1 up.
Saints pushed forward and with only 3 minutes left Channon took a corner which went in directly with a little help from Gillard, in the days before the dubious goals panel there was no disputing who was claiming the goal though.
That was it goals wise and although honours were even both sets of supporters went home happy having watched a great feast of attacking football. Saints still sat 10th in the table and were now only 4 points behind Burnley in 3rd, its true to say that Saints fans had no inkling of what was about to happen over the next few months.
The following week Saints travelled to Ipswich for a Saturday evening kick off and were walloped 7-0, a midweek victory against Newcastle at the Dell saw the gap between 3rd close to only three points and being nine points above the relegation zone there was only one direction Saints fans were looking and that was up, but that victory on 5th February would hearald the start of a nightmare run of 13 games in which we would win only once and pick up only 4 draws meaning that come the final day of the season we were relying on others to lose if we were to stay up, despite a great 3-0 win at Goodison on the final day of the season it wasnt to be enough and inexplicably we had been relegated.
QPR who on February 5th has sat only two points above us from 28 games finished eigth on 43 points whilst we were the first victims of the three down rule on 36 points, like the season we went down in 2005 a late goal could have saved us in anyone of a number of games.