Apart from boasting one of the world’s largest collections of cringeworthy team names, Australia’s premier football competition the Hyundai A-League is home to a collection of Loftus Road alumni that most QPR fans would prefer not to remember, and some you probably can’t.
It was only a fortnight ago, at a preseason fixture between Sydney and Perth Glory at Jubilee in Sydney’s south, that I laid eyes on a familiar face wearing the number ten for the Perth outfit - their star signing Liam Miller.
Miller, who has gone from Old Trafford to the world renowned NIB stadium in five years, had a short-lived career at Loftus Road, lasting less than a year before being released. In his short tenure Miller did manage to show some glimpses of quality, and in his stint at Hibernian after his release he enjoyed a degree of success, this contributing to the optimism in Perth surrounding Miller’s signature.
But Miller’s time in W12 could hardly be counted as a success and the arrival of players like him Down Under has been met with reservation by a certain Ned Zelic, who wrote: “Yes, we have had some good foreign players that have lit up the A-League, but the failures and generally average players far outnumber the ones that have succeeded.”
Our old friend Zelic has hung up his boots and is now a columnist and expert panellist for SBS. Zelic, we all remember, had a less than impressive stint at Loftus Road himself. While Ray Wilkins described him as “as versatile as an egg”, a simile along the lines of ‘as fragile as...’ may have been more appropriate. His career at Newcastle Jets, for whom he wore the armband in the A-League’s first season, also ended in the physio room. After a fairly successful first season, Zelic was struck down by (you guessed it!) a crippling knee injury that ended his career in the A-League, condemning him to a few years in the backwaters of Georgia to finish off his injury blighted career.
Then there’s John Curtis, Reece Crowther and Terry McFlynn, two players you probably can’t even remember and one you wish you’d forgottten.
Brought in on a free transfer by John Gregory, Curtis, formerly of Manchester United, Portsmouth and Nottingham Forest, managed only four appearances in the blue and white hoops before being moved on later in the year. Despite his limited time on the pitch he’s remembered as one of QPR’s worst ever players.
He’s now at Gold Coast United, a club which caps its crowds at 5000 despite their 27,000 capacity stadium in order to save rental costs - a bizarre ploy even Flavio Briatore couldn’t have thought up. His tenure on the Gold Coast has seen him make 19 appearances and score a cracker of a goal, but he is renowned throughout the league for his lack of pace, and therefore it was no surprise to see him released before the start of this season.
Then there’s Reece Crowther, a young goalkeeper with a somewhat comical kicking style. The closest he ever came to a senior appearance at QPR was stripping off on the bench at Norwich one afternoon when it looked like Lee Camp was about to be sent off – Damion Stewart harshly saw red instead. Having failed to make a single appearance at QPR in his three year stint he is now on the books of the Wellington Phoenix, making his debut in a 2-0 loss against Sydney after first choice Mark Paston suffered a fractured leg. He has recently spent the Australian off season with Ekenas in Finland on loan and has seen the start to the new season in Oz disrupted by a rib injury.
And Terry McFlynn, in my belief one of the most overrated players in the league, a QPR youth product from Northern Ireland who is now captain at Sydney FC. His performances in the early years of the competition were stellar, but as the league has got better, he has been left behind, the cries of “all I want for Christmas is a new captain” heard in Sydney last year were a testament to this. Known for his rash tackling style, he has shown he can be a decent player at A-League level, however he hasn’t done so of late.
But it’s not all doom and gloom, there is a success story in Nick Ward. Ward, now at Wellington, is the only of the aforementioned to have ever scored a goal in blue and white. A goal of his last year came extremely close to goal of the season, a superbly placed shot into the top left hand corner from a fair distance out. He has cemented his place after 80 A-League appearances as one of the league’s foremost creative players, an achievement unparalleled by any of the other former Rangers plying their trade in the A-League to date.
So will Miller, who will make his A-League debut this weekend, be an A-League success story like Nick Ward, or a disappointment like many of the other Rs alumni that call the league home? Will I be proudly exalting “he used to play for QPR, you know”? Or will I yet again have to explain the paltry number of appearances and resulting free transfer of the player as a vindication of my beloved Rangers in a country populated by glory hunting fans of top four clubs only too happy to laugh at the Australian contingent of QPR alumni? Time will tell.