Robert Donnellan’s father Terry had a dying wish — to see Charlie Austin score a winner at Loftus Road one more time.
It’s often asked "why do bad things happen to good people?”. But recently I learned that even in dark times, those good things, however small, still happen too.
It is December 2020. In the middle of a global pandemic that is suddenly re-escalating, for some mad reason we are allowed to go to a football match. Most people enter lotteries to win life-altering prizes, so perhaps fitting that I easily win one where the prize is sitting through an insipid QPR defeat to a mediocre Reading side. The whole day is exceptionally strange. Sitting in the garden of the Crown & Sceptre trying to order the smallest amount of food that permits us to stay for the longest amount of time. Sitting in a mask, a sterile atmosphere and the faint feeling that it was madness that we were there at all.
But the thing really compounding the oddity of the whole occasion was walking into an unfamiliar part of the ground, and realising that my father, Terry, might never make another QPR game, and this would be the first match of an era of my life attending without him.
In August 2020, my father was diagnosed with cancer in his liver. In September they confirm that the primary cancer is pancreatic. Which as far as cancers go, is basically game over. So severe, his life insurance paid out while he was still alive. Later when his oncologist told him there was nothing more they could do, dad asked if it meant he was in end-of-life care. He replied that he had been in end-of-life care since he was diagnosed. They offered him chemo, but warned it would be a testing experience, and it had a low chance of delivering positive effects.
There had been small signs we’d missed. In February's ‘strictly business’ victory over Derby County, dad had complained endlessly about being cold in the extremities of his fingers and toes. "Put some gloves on then” I told him. As a painter and decorator he’d worked all through the first lockdown, as Covid-19 is scared of bricks I guess. But as he dodged the plague, he’d started to complain of regular stomach aches and lost weight fairly dramatically. By the time he asked if he could ring me when I’d finished work in late August, I already knew what he was going to tell me. And walking into the Upper School End in mid December whilst dad was taking the full brunt of chemo, it seemed a reasonable conclusion that he’d never be back here. This was the start of me being on my own.
I guess a lot of fathers and sons in the UK base their interactions on a parasocial relationship with a sports team. Me and mine were no different, but it was a longer road getting there. He made the mistake of introducing me to Star Trek at a young age, and thus cultivated a son who was bookish and into aliens, so naturally I slipped into "supporting” Man Utd like my mates because I was already weird enough. Judge me all you want, Peter denied Christ three times. I’ll wear being a glory hunter aged ten to reduce the amount of pummellings I took at school.
Truth be told, until I was about 11, I actually couldn’t have given less of a shit about football. As a child of both worlds, neither Ireland's nor England’s Italia 90s prepared me for what adult life would be like, and the devastating effect of their failures on my 6-year-old mind was hard to overcome. My mates started playing for a local team (big up Hillingdon Irish) and I joined in to avoid them making friends they might like more than me. As an agricultural centre back I discovered sport is quite a handy way of taking up pent up aggression that accumulated with my inability to deal with anxiety. The team got some free tickets to QPR, and so we started going to some matches together.
I had an inauspicious start to my life with Loftus Road in it. In my first three games there I put my hand in sick (how do you throw up onto a railing?), an away fan made throat slitting gestures at me for the whole game (I have that effect on people) and after Fraser Digby was sent off in a game vs Swindon, Alan McDonald went in goal and had the game of his life, pulling off non-stop worldies as QPR lost 2-1.
I was especially gutted, as Big Mac was who I’d based my centre back play on having seen him in the flesh a couple of times. I met him in the offie in Hillingdon once. He was buying fags, I was buying sweets. I said "You’re Alan MacDonald!”. He said "aye” and left.
I actually wouldn’t see QPR win in person until I was 19 years old.
The free tickets dried up as we got older and our team broke up a bit, but dad had spotted an in and exploited it as much as he could. He often worked weekends and we weren’t overflowing with cash, but we tried to go to a game in August every season as a little tradition. His own absentee father took dad’s tickets to the 1967 cup final for his mate, then started supporting Arsenal in his second life. So my burgeoning support for QPR really meant a lot to him.
By the age of 15 I was writing essays in English about Loftus Road. It received a low grade and was called "deeply confusing” by the marking teacher. Due to money and life we continued our haphazard approach to attending. Many have crazy stories of promotion at Hillsborough. Mine is my dad told me in the car, picking me up from a shift stacking shelves in Sainsbury's. I entered adulthood saying I was a QPR fan with my whole chest.
Whilst I was his son, dad and I came from very different worlds. I have a friend called Tristram, he had a friend called Wobbly (and a big shout out to Wobbly who organised so many people coming to dad’s funeral). Going through the photos for the wake, some of the pictures of him as a child in Galway look like they were taken in a warzone. I’m not lying, in one he legitimately has a piece of rope used as a belt. Due to the timing of my birth, I was able to go to an incredible university, for free. I have had so many opportunities and experiences compared to my dad who was just considered poor and thick, and so played the hand he was dealt the best he could.
There is a lot of mythology in my dad’s family history. Relatives I grew up calling aunts or grandparents actually had a "great” in front of those titles. There was a missing generation on account of the fact his own father absconded from his life and his mother abandoned dad and his siblings at Paddington Green police station. A story I didn’t believe until I saw the local newspaper clipping. Dad left school at 16, married at 19, had me at 24. An age at which I hadn’t even been to my first Glastonbury yet.
As a result of his upbringing, dad was pretty devoted to us, even though it was mostly driving us around in his collection of clapped out bangers. The Mirror once published a list of the ten worst cars ever made; dad had owned eight of them. He came to watch me play rugby and every time had to ask what the score was at full time. When many sons reach 14, their father might sit them down and tell them how the world works. Mine sat me down and made me listen to Led Zepplin IV on vinyl. "You’ll thank me one day” he told me.
As I started to earn more money, we started to attend matches more frequently. We got season tickets, and bounced around the ground until ending up in the West Paddocks. Yeah, sure you get wet. But there are good people, a nice view, and as a 6’2” man, I can leave with my shins intact. I met my now wife, and her friend from university was dating a guy born on the same day as me who was also a QPR fan. I now had a group of reprobates to drink with. Invariably my matchday experience was turning up three minutes before kick off as my dad waited, admonished me for the flat cap I’d taken to wearing to games ("That Fucking Hat” to give it its full title) and tutted at me for being late yet again. Now he’s gone I do wonder what was so special about one more pint it was worth losing ten minutes of time with him.
Loftus Road became a focal point of my relationship with my father. Where we made memories together. Where we got drenched together. Where he would dish out life advice, most of it terrible. To be honest, more than the football, I looked forward to just chatting the breeze with the man for whom I had so much respect. As I mentioned, dad’s own absentee father stole dad’s ticket to the final and started supporting Arsenal with his second family. So it’s hard to fully comprehend what it was like to him to have memories like winning the league, winning the play offs, beating Chelsea, with me. It really felt like it closed a wound for him.
Not long after that Reading game, Christmas was cancelled. On Christmas Eve, I stood on the doorstop of my family home, my dad a slither of a man having just finished two months of the hardest chemo they have. He begged me to come inside, but I just couldn’t do it. I couldn’t let him go through all that just to put him at risk for my own gratification. I’ve had some dark Christmas Days, but mostly self-inflicted and nothing a paracetamol and a Rennie couldn’t sort. Sitting on your own, watching the Bottom Christmas Special, trying to take your mind off it being your father’s last Christmas, and you’ve spent it apart, though, was utterly wretched.
Then the damnedest thing happened. Whilst he was never going to be cured, the low percentage success rate chemotherapy punt actually worked. It felt like a miracle at the time, but in hindsight it bought dad an extra year of fairly high quality life with us. Given only 5% of people with pancreatic cancer live longer than a year, and we ended up with almost two, I will be forever grateful to the doctors, nurses and scientists that bought us that time. He even went back to work at one point, the daft bastard.
So, by our first home game of the 2021/22 season against Millwall, he was well enough to come to the match. I still pinch myself thinking about it. Sat in the billowing August sunshine, Rob Dickie putting it top bins, dad even came to the pub afterwards. He didn’t even do that when we won the league. A day I will treasure my whole life. One big slice of normality in a fractious time.
Two men who really enjoyed QPR 1-1 Millwall
Facing up to his mortality, dad was very clear about what he wanted from life. And in footballing terms, it could not have been clearer. "I want to live long enough to see a Charlie Austin winner in person”.
Dad, I can’t stress this enough, loved Charlie. He loved him when he was here, he loved him when he left. In our wilderness years, to dad’s mind, loaning Charlie Austin back was the solution to all ills. A groan would fill the car any time he pointed out Charlie wasn’t getting many minutes at Southampton. Such was the ardour my dad carried for him, during the Euros my mum enquired why Charlie wasn’t playing for England.
Now, I know Charlie coming back, and then coming back permanently, didn’t have the happiest ending for everyone. I myself had spent years telling dad it was a bad idea. But what it meant for my dad, I really cannot stress. His return on loan coincided not only with the team’s upturn in form, but dad’s own health. Every goal he scored brought him such joy. When he signed permanently, I was overjoyed at dad getting a shot at fulfilling his wish.
Sadly, it took its time coming. His treatment had effected dad’s eyesight, so after one goal I thought about lying that it was Charlie, even though I could clearly see it was Barbet. Luckily, the tannoy made my choice for me. Weeks, then months passed. Dad was coming to a surprisingly large number of games, though steadfastly refusing to talk about his condition whenever he got the shakes or nodded off.
Then it happened. West Brom at home. If your dying loved one’s one goal in life was to see a winning goal by their favourite player, I’m not really sure you could script a last minute winner in a critical league match. He was offside too, truly serendipity. When the ball hit the net, I didn’t know what to do with myself. I turned to my right to see dad attempting to hurdle the seat in front of me
"Dad, what are you doing?”
"I’m getting on the pitch!”
"You can’t do that!”
"Why, what are they gonna do? Ban me for life?”
Thankfully, he saw sense. We left with our arms around each other, my eyes a little leaky.
I hadn’t been able to believe my luck. Not only was dad in relatively solid health, we watched a swashbuckling QPR team take all comers and seem destined for the play offs. Unfortunately, dad’s health was to follow the form of the side. His last game was the Reading thrashing, and we never seemed quite the same again, and neither did he.
Though, a shout out to the club here. I wrote in asking if there was anything they could do for him. I thought they’d send him a card or something. I was not expecting a text from the auld lad saying he’d been on the phone with Andy Sinton for an hour. Dad wouldn’t tell me what they discussed, only that it was "very emotional”. He brought it up non stop, so a deep thank you to Andy in particular; it really meant the world to him.
The final home game of the season against Sheffield United had a morbid atmosphere. You could almost taste the dejection, the remorse of opportunity wasted. For me it was doubly so. Dad had seen his oncologist the day before, and had the "there’s nothing more we can do” conversation. So on a night of shattered dreams, I sat next to dad’s empty seat for what I knew would be the last time. Naturally, who else but Charlie should pop up and stick a trademark header away. I left the ground in floods of tears, only able to walk due to the strength I borrowed from the family that sit next to us and my friends. Childish perhaps, but having remained stoic through so much the idea of not being in that dilapidated old cave with this mercurious club that disappoints far more than it delights with him again crushed me.
His doctors had said he likely had a couple of months left, but his decline was swift and brutal. He died two weeks later. The speed of his descent took us all on the hop. My last cogent conversation with him was about the new fencing he’d had installed, but my sister who'd been delayed returning from Canada thanks to the Passport Office barely got any proper time with him at all. His last two days in particular were, to be blunt, horrendous. But we fought tooth and nail, and we had him at home, surrounded by all us, at peace when he left. And that is all we can really ask for.
He died on my birthday. Which he, no doubt, would have found absolutely hilarious.
I will also use this moment to urge you to think about your end of life planning. Dad had a funeral plan and a will and it made it all so much easier on us. Except we did get a £200 surcharge because he died outside of office hours. Good to know capitalism doesn’t stop rutting you just cos you’re dead. After completing all the "sadmin” and the funeral, life starts to return in fits and starts. The sadness hits you at random. I broke down in tears watching Macca play with Bruce at Glastonbury. I turned to my wife sobbing "dad would’ve hated this” - Springsteen and rugby being two battles I never won with him.
As we turn through the summer, I start to dread returning to Loftus Road.
My friends and I put in for rail seats together. I was thinking this is no time to be alone, they want to move so I’ll go along with them. Don’t want them to make friends they might like more than me after all. We get the email to tell us we have them. Everyone is excited, and I guess I am too. But another hearty sob ensues. We can not be trapped by our pasts, but it feels like taking a huge step without a guiding presence alongside me that has managed to get me thus far.
In one way, it feels fitting to close off a chapter, and leave it complete with all those memories. But on the other it feels sad that there won’t be any more of them. He won’t sceam "Wembley!” in my face as we win a play-off semi-final again. He won’t force me to sit to the final whistle of a 6-0 drubbing because his number one rule was never leave before the end. He won’t make friends in the stands around us in a way I’ve never been able to with a cheeky smile and a seemingly limitless supply of sweets.
But something being over doesn’t really mean it’s gone. Something lives as long as the last person to remember it. And I have to keep going. After all, I’m the only Donnellan who hasn’t abandoned QPR for Arsenal.
I used to joke my dad only sent three text messages. "Yes”, "Ok” and "U Rs”. So, one last time for you Terry, U Rs. I miss you a great deal.
Pictures — Robert Donnellan
The Twitter @rbrtdnnlln