The great QPR side of the 1970s has saddled scores of Scandinavians with a long term love of the Super Hoops, as Dave Elderfield tells LFW.
Two dozen men are sitting in a row, some sporting beards, all wearing identical nylon, newly purchased, alternately coloured peaked hats with blond locks flowing down their necks. They’re attired in flared trousers and tank tops, emitting strange, indecipherable words made even more difficult to comprehend by a bargain priced beer binge that has loosened their tongues. There are advertising hoardings displaying unusual brand names made up of a strange combination of foreign vowels and misplaced consonants. But it’s not Agneta, Benny, Björn and Anna-Frid that are about to take centre stage, instead it’s Stan, Gerry, Don and Phil. We are at Loftus Road, it’s the mid-seventies and you are witnessing an early invasion of so called football tourists.
The game itself is being televised and broadcast live in Sweden (possibly Norway and Denmark too) on a Saturday afternoon football programme known as Tipsextra. And that is where these particular Scandinavians have earlier witnessed the exquisite football being played by QPR from their living rooms before deciding to experience it live. Only one game a week is shown though and these fans are pretty choosy about who they’re going to watch in the flesh. No satellite TV overkill of live games every day back in those days, numbing the masses into “supporting” Man Utd or any other “globally branded” club.
These Nordic invaders have even used the same method of transport as their Viking forefathers – a boat. Luckily no rowing was required, but they’ve still had to endure twenty four hours of tacky entertainment, inedible food, sinks swilling with duty free vomit induced by a lethal combination of choppy seas and cheap vodka. Narrow maze like corridors heave with swaying, boisterous Norse invaders leading to hamster cage sized cabins in the pit of the now defunct Gothenburg to Harwich ferry.
Tipsextra started showing live games from England in 1969, the first one being Wolves v Sunderland. You’ll find a disproportionate number of Swedes over the age of forty supporting unfashionable teams such as QPR, Coventry, Huddersfield, Derby and Stoke all of whom appeared on the programme regularly during its heyday. In fact we had to wait until 1983 before a First Division league game was first shown live on TV in England.
If you watched Tipsextra it was obligatory to obtain a Stryktipset coupon from your local newsagents with thirteen different English games printed on it, choosing a “1” for a home win, an “X” for a draw and a “2” for an away win next to each separate match. Different systems and permutations were used with the same stake on each line of thirteen and the payout system was similar to that used by Tote. Every time a goal was scored in a non-televised game on the coupon a strange “pling” sound emitted from your TV notifying you of this. The betting coupon and a slicker, bastardised version of the show, now called Tipslördag, complete with Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels style advertising sketches involving English actors, is still around today, although as the cliché goes it’s just not the same.
How do I know all of this? Well I’ve been resident in Sweden for 20 years and what I haven’t witnessed myself I’ve gleaned from people who’ve reclined into flower patterned, orange sofas from IKEA (yeah I know, stereotypical) and watched all of this unfold during the seventies and eighties.
As the English are hardly the world’s leading bilingualists we are not really justified in commenting on how certain other nationalities mispronounce a variety of words in our own language and in fact the Scandinavians generally speak very good English. I’d go as far as to say that they have a better grasp of our native tongue than ‘Arry’s “expert panellist” offspring. In my defence I partake in the tongue gymnastics that Swedish requires and will therefore venture into this area of mirth.
Let’s start, in good nature, with our team. We are most often known as QPR, Queens Park Rangers, Rangers or the R’s in our native country. Here the strange abbreviation “Queens Park” is very popular, I’ve worn out my explanation that it’s a Scottish club and just go along with it now. “QP-air” is also popular and I’ve even heard the dreaded “Queens” used on numerous occasions.
As for player names. Stan Bowles was actually known as “Stan Balls” in some quarters. Mark Hughes became “Mark Huge” during his playing days, probably a future reference to the size of the mess he was to leave at our club and the pay packet that he received for doing it. Vinnie Jones? “Winnie Jones”. During one World Cup amongst some less knowledgeable, fair-weather football followers in my local, Shearer and Sheringham actually morphed into the same player, the super versatile “Shearingham”.
The mindblowing selection of games available on TV on a Saturday. How did QRP get on?
Throughout the years commentators have become far more proficient, but the ears will occasionally prick up at a classic mispronunciation. Not that I haven’t put my foot in it in Swedish before, for any Swedes reading this (like my wife and kids for instance). I’ve been involved in coaching girl’s teams here, at one game involving a bunch of 11 year old young ladies I grew frustrated at the lack of challenges going in on the opposition and demanded at the top of my voice that the girls in our team “tackle them”. Unfortunately I hadn’t checked the finer points of sporting terminology, it turns out that I was actually encouraging them to perform ice hockey challenges on the opposition. There were quite a few dirty looks from some of the parents and confused looks from the girls.
Sweden like any other country has it’s fair share of football related expressions. My favourite has to be the phrase used to describe a goalkeeper flapping at a cross, directly translated as “he’s out hanging the washing”. Another term which can relate to a disagreement over which TV channel is selected and is used to describe a man who likes boast to his mates that he calls the shots at home, only to cower into submission when confronted by his better half, here we have a “a hero in slippers”. There’s a cheap brand of vodka available here that has been unofficially rebranded as “disturbance in the apartment”.
Whilst on the subject of foreign languages and mix ups I saw a bizarre incident unfold in the Springbok before the Everton game. A group of very harmless looking Norwegians (similar lingo to Swedish) were conversing with each other in their native tongue when all sudden a not too hospitable member of the bar staff demanded to see their tickets. Egged on by the resident coked-up language professor – a rather dubious character at the bar, the confused Norwegians were accused of being Scousers and were on the verge of being ejected from the pub. I was forced to intervene and vouch for them, a highly cringe worthy state of affairs. To top this off, I had previously witnessed the aforementioned master of linguistics in the same boozer proudly flashing an iPhone image of himself standing next to Joey Barton prior to our ex-captain’s debut against Newcastle last season. I wonder if he could put two and two together and work out where Barton hails from, maybe he thinks “our Joey” is Norwegian.
During our previous stint in the Premier League I travelled over with a Swedish friend with a very limited knowledge of football for a game against Wimbledon, apt opposition for somebody who is not accustomed to the finer points of the game. The first thing he did when we entered the ground was to place a bet on the first goalscorer. Unwillingly he chose one of Wimbledon’s centre backs, Reeves, a name that I cannot erase from my memory. He also decided that the goal would be scored with between 45 and 50 minutes on the clock. I mumbled something about a header from a corner, no prizes for guessing what happened after 48 minutes.
QPR like many other English clubs used to do some of their pre-season tours in Scandinavia in the days before playing meaningless tournaments in Dubai or Papua New Guinea to promote your brand came along. I think that the main reason for this was that the Swedish clubs play a fairly physical game and that they are actually in the middle of their season by summer time and are therefore match fit. The training facilities at smaller clubs were also deemed to be of a relatively high standard.
A year after I moved here in the early 1990s QPR played a pre-season friendly against top Swedish club IFK Gothenburg in a village called Valinge outside my native town of Varberg. It was a truly exotic location for an English club, basically a clearing in a forest at the end of a gravel path with two pitches in the middle of it. There were no stands, although a makeshift one was constructed using wooden pallets along one side of the pitch. Around three thousand people turned up to see the R’s win 2-1 at the ground of a lower division club that rarely sees crowds reach three figures.
QPR v IFK Gothenburg played in the middle of a forest. Les Ferdinand, the late great Alan McDonald and Bradley Allen converge around a very prominent portaloo or “toalett”.
My town of residence Varberg has a good reputation for its spa hotels with many teams choosing to stay here if they’re playing in Gothenburg. During Euro 92, which Sweden hosted, I was sitting with my wife and three month old daughter outside a bar, on holiday at the time, when we were greeted by the bizarre sight of Marco van Basten pulling up next to us on a push bike. I tried to hand over my daughter in an attempt to get a nice holiday snap. Unfortunately my wife didn’t seem too enthused by the idea.
I used to pray for Rangers to sign a Swedish player as this increased the chance of your game being selected for live coverage massively. I can only remember one player, namely Rob Steiner. When the football round up appeared on the national news one Sunday both of his goals in a 4-1 win at Ipswich in October 1999 were shown in a spot usually reserved for a round-up of the big boys.
So if you bump into any any Swedes quaffing what for them is bargain basement beer in the vicinity of W12 or in the ground itself, as they attempt to recoup the price of a Ryanair ticket in savings on lager, you can greet them with “Välkomna till Loftus Road”. Just make sure that they’re not Danish.
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Pictures – Dave Elderfield