Sheffield/Luton/Derby – Awaydays Sunday, 17th Nov 2024 19:03 by Clive Whittingham As the club once again threatens to crumble around us, it’s time return the boring/soothing tones of LFW’s long stories that don’t go anywhere to your screens, starting with our autumn adventures along the East Midlands Railway. Leaving EarlyThere can be few more peculiar football supporter phenomena than the early leavers. You commit a whole day - the whole of the best day of your week - to a football game. You often travel great distances at vast expense to get there. Or, worse still, experience a rail replacement bus service. You might have had to scramble over a dead grandmother to get a ticket. Or, worse still, negotiate QPR’s Ticketmaster-operated website. You might be 150 sheets lighter before you’ve even left the house in the morning and started drinking. All for this match. And now, with ten minutes of it left to play, here you are, walking out. Cinema, theatre, concert? Preposterous. Football? Literally hundreds of you/us. I was brought up as an early leaver. My dad would get us up at the fart of the sparrow, have us at Doncaster train station for the 08.44, have us in Covent Garden for breakfast by 10.30, have us in The Goldhawk by midday and be walking along the back of the Upper Loft at a minute to three. This is a substantial investment of time and capital into watching Queens Park Rangers play a home game. And then he’d book us on the 17.30 home and we’d leave the game after 75 minutes. He was, as I’ve mentioned a time or two before, a gentleman of extremes. This created the bizarre situation every fortnight where we’d often get all the way back to home in the evening without being sure of the final score of the game we’d been at. We’d actually have had a better idea of how QPR were doing by staying at home by the fire every weekend and watching Ceefax scroll around. It was my job to call home for the final scores from a pay phone at Kings Cross (gran used to write them on the back of the Scunthorpe Evening Telegraph and read them back to me) but if there was no time to do that then we’d sit on that train for an hour and 45 minutes not knowing. Back at Donny I’d have to sprint through the underpass and dip under the shutter of the newsagent before it closed up properly to grab their final copy of the Green ‘Un which had the scores on the back. It was then my duty to traipse back to the buffet bar and inform those present that, actually, we hadn’t beaten Man City 2-1 after all. Georgi Kinkladze had scored a penalty in the 81st minute and it had finished 2-2. Happy drinking. This means while I was indeed there at Port Vale when QPR recovered from four goals down at half time to draw, I was in fact only there in person for the going 4-0 down bit. When John Spencer hit his momentous equaliser I was being driven erratically and at increasing speed, with lights flashing and horn blaring, around a roundabout on the A506 south of Hanley Bus Station. Quite a life experience, but it would have been nice to be there, no? Apparently not. Even the sound of celebrating Rangers fans marking Andy Impey’s spectacular second as we crossed the car park wasn’t enough to even make him break stride and consider heading back in. Nutter. Staying to see the end of the football game is therefore an avenue of pleasure that has only opened itself to me in adulthood – like shagging, or Michael Palin travelogues. It means I’m now there, behind the goal, at Bramall Lane to see Lyndon Dykes steer home a last-minute equaliser for ten man Rangers. We go back via Champs, on Eccleshall Road, where some of life’s real winners drink. James Beattie used to take the youth teamers here after training. Then there’s a genuinely brilliant curry at nearby Ashoka - cannot wait to find the one that beats this to our curry of the season, just don’t sit on that end table by the window. Before long we’re on the train home in an advanced state of alcoholic refreshment, loving life and football all over again. And never mind Jonathan Varane’s alarming opening 15 minutes, or Jack Colback’s latest brain explosion. "If you’d been standing with us, you’d have had some view. Of Saito, through the goal net, cutting infield and choosing his pass like a professional footballer. Of Dykes, holding back to use the defender as a screen. Of the ball, diverted exquisitely off the inside of his foot. And of the shot, rolling just oh so perfectly straight towards us, goalkeeper not reaching it with a butterfly net. A goal you could celebrate long before it made it home. And celebrate we did. "The ants in the colony crawled all over each other in honour of their queen. The fat fuck with the beard who’d spent the whole afternoon testiculating at pitch and away end from the main stand, to the obvious mortification of his young son sitting alongside, now sat in stony silence. Motionless, powerless. We see you. "And the seat in front bit a meaty chunk out of my shin in its final act before giving way beneath the weight of too much takeaway and euphoria. The flesh remains there today, crisping up in the South Yorkshire sunshine. And I feel the sadomasochistic satisfaction of that sting in the shower once more. "Awayday shins are back. So, for 45 minutes at least, were QPR." There are, however, still some exceptions. If the idea of being kettled on Oak Road in Luton just long enough for the locals to get into position on the Dunstable High Road, by that shop advertising a whole sheep for a fiver, and meet your giant sitting duck as it floats towards them at police pace doesn't appeal, then you may choose to slip out of that away end a moment or two early. To do so risks missing Paul Furlong rampaging through on goal and equalising right in front of you at the height of the ‘we’ve got Tony Thorpe’ furore. So, now you’ve spent all day being shuffled around various bits of Luton by Bedfordshire Police, stood in that away end surrounded on all sides by baying hordes spitting bile, slogged through 89 minutes of ostensibly a poor 1-0 defeat, and not even been there for the sweet, sweet release of the leveller and all the inevitable wanker signs you’d have loved to deliver back at your tormenters. I was starting to think that place was even more cursed than it looks/smells when Macauley Bonne went through on that same goal for a glorious injury time second on Charlie Austin’s second coming, while the government had us all locked in our houses watching the games on TV. But then, well then this happened… "It’s about the Thameslink to Shitsville and the train beers that prepare you for what’s to come. It’s about walking into a desolate cave like this one, like somewhere a knight would go to fight a demon in a Dürer etching, and standing there watching your team get battered. It’s about the helplessness you feel as those long balls to Adebayo drop out of the floodlights towards you, and how vulnerable your players look in dealing with them. It’s that here-we-go-again feeling after you fall behind, and the celebrations from the home crowd, and the shitgibbons to your immediate right doing the whole climb-the-fence, hold-me-back-Gaz routine in your direction. It’s the thought of the Oak Road blockade, the police-led snail trail back to the station, the early hours arrival home all for nothing. All for another defeat on the road. All for Luton bastard Town singing “Queens Park Rangers, it’s happened again.” All for what-on-earth-am-I-doing-with-my-life. And £6 for a Cruzcampo in a plastic glass. IT’S BREWED IN MANCHESTER, DON’T THINK WE DON’T KNOW. Cruzcampo my arse. One nil. May as well be eight. "But it is only one nil, isn’t it. Yehhhh, it is only one nil. And, as Mark Strong taught us in Fever Pitch, if you want to win a game 2-0 you’ve got more chance of doing so if it’s nil nil at half time than you have if you’re eight goals down. Of course, Mel, the biggest problem with Fever Pitch? If QPR had needed to win two nil at Anfield to win the league title… you’d have fucking been there. Because when you are there, and you see Dembele give Doughty the full pledge, turn and prestige right in front of you, and you remember this grown man with a blonde rinse giving the South Africa Road stand the big ‘un on Tuesday shortly before a penalty shoot out blew up in his face, you start to get back into it. You start to grow in a bit of belief. You start to think yehhhhh, it is only one nil. Fuck these. "Fuck these indeed. Soon Michael Frey starts to do exactly that. Dry slapping their £10m centre back around the gaff. Mark McGuinness, £10m (I keep repeating it because if you say these things often enough they become true, and it cannot possibly be true at this moment), flapping around like Christ in a crucifix shop under pressure from… Michael Frey. Out of my way puny boy. They’re coming towards you now, the pair of them, wrestling away. Frey’s got the right side of his man from a QPR point of view. The ball’s bobbling and bouncing all over the show. Two enemy hands on his shoulders, he’s surely going to fall. Just you be ready with that throaty penalty appeal. Now he is falling. God, I can’t take it. Last, desperate effort to fling out a leg and toe the ball across the box and… to where? Where’s this going? You follow it across. A flash of blue and white. Could literally be anybody. Ball in the net. And it’s live. Bodies over tired bodies. People going low as they lose their feet, friends disappearing from view like those couples who decided to jump together from the Titanic as it went down. Kath’s banged her head on the concrete. People going high, clambering up stanchions and pillars, less to escape the carnage, more to get a better vantage point to deliver their wanker sign to the right. So that it’s your wanker sign they remember most, so it’s your wanker sign they see when they close their yes tonight. Aggggggggggggggh. "Safe standing becomes flying death trap. We’re still dealing with the walking wounded. Still busy turning the song round – Luton Town, that’s twice in a week. Still trying to work out who scored. Still booking the Saturday morning trip to iSmash. That’s phone number one of the season. Still picking bits of metal out of our scalps. Barely noticing QPR are already working the ball from right to left again. Through Dembele, of course, and goalscorer Madsen, to Kenneth Paal who, if I bend my back slightly and lean sort of behind and to the right, I can peer around the goal, a post and a dividing fence and see him wrapping a left boot around the ball, sending it arcing up into the sky and out of my view. "Well, now we’re all heads on a swivel again. Working our field of vision back across the penalty area in a sweeping motion, counting the QPR players, counting the Luton players, trying to judge where this one’s going. Little do we know it’s got the curvature of a Brazilian underwear model’s lower back. Over and past Madsen, Colback, Field, Dembele and Smyth it bends. David Ginola mange, tomato ketchup. We’re running out of QPR players but, as they’re all marked, Luton defenders must be running in quite short supply as well. Surely? Simple maths innit. Suddenly there’s just me, staring out through the net, at Michael Frey, all by himself, kicking a football harder than a football has ever been kicked before, straight at my face. There’s an explosive sound off his boot, the click and collect of the net immediately, and the dissolution of common decency and society in the pit behind the goal once more. "Dogs and cats living together. Mass hysteria. As QPR score two in two minutes. And Luton are rocking. Last orders at Mabel’s Tavern is it?"
Then there’s the fed-up early flounce. When Rangers have just been so terrible, and the scoreline is apparently now so far out of reach, that you just want out of there as quickly as you can before all the full time singing and dancing starts. This can, however, lead to you missing some of the greatest moments in recent club history. Confession number two, after Port Vale, I was also at Derby for Jamie Mackie’s ridiculous late leveller in 2010, though I was in the car park when Patrick Agyemang made it 2-1 and was nearly back in The Waterfall by the time Mackie equalised. That was, basically, the last time I did that. Never leave early, remember Jamie Mackie. There is, however, occasionally just something that triggers me, and I become so angry I essentially have to leave out of self-preservation and for the benefit of those around me because I can feel myself losing the plot. Steve McClaren’s Rangers going 2-0 down at home to relegation bound Bolton, just a few days after losing 2-1 at home to relegation bound Rotherham, had me turning on my heels and fleeing for fear of doing or saying something I’d regret. No comeback that day. Fucking wally. That happened to me again this season at Hillsborough. A dreadful match, stretched out over 90+ gruelling minutes, destined to finish nil nil and richly deserving of that scoreline. A crime against football, an assault on the senses, nothing to commend it to the audience. A filthy couple of hours of supposed professional sport. QPR’s contribution was to play like complete tarts for the duration. Then, three minutes into stoppage time, Barry Bannan bounced one into the top corner and won the game for the hosts, running to the away end cupping his ear as he did so. Stuck in football purgatory, and now taunted by its resident demonic elf, I just shook my head and walked away. Fucking bullshit. And as I crossed the Leppings Lane car park that familiar roar. Too quiet to be the home crowd, too close to be the Kop End, too euphoric to be a full time whistle. To Impey, Spencer and Mackie we can now add this beaut…
So commences another decade of “I’m staying, remember Alfie Lloyd”. This will result mostly in my clogging through multiple pointless periods of stoppage time watching a 2-0 defeat at Blackburn become a 2-0 defeat at Blackburn. The reward for that will be the odd Lyndon Dykes at Bramall Lane. And slowly I will once again become complacent enough to, in about ten years’ time, storm out of a 3-0 deficit at Cheltenham Town in pure disgust, and miss Hunter Austin completing the comeback with his first goal for the club in stoppage time while I’m halfway back to the train station. The cosmic ballet goes on. Does anybody want to switch seats? Leaving LateThere are votes in trains. You can’t talk about “levelling up” the north while connecting cities of the size and importance of Manchester and Leeds with three coach diesel trains trundling about at 60 mph. You can’t talk about tourism, and nightlife, and culture when the last train from Sheffield to the towns east of it leaves at 22.00 on a Saturday night. When the last train out of Newcastle tonight TO ANYWHERE is at 22.10, and the last train to London is at half eight. When the advice for anybody wanting to go from Leeds to London on a Saturday night any later than half nine is to go across to York on the 23.00 service, sit there for seven hours, and then get the first train in the morning which arrives at 10.00 tomorrow. Try to book a train to Manchester’s Christmas Market and it actually sends you an alert telling you not to dare doing so, because it’s Manchester’s Christmas Market that day. Manchester mayor Andy Burnham recently discovered one of the many obstacles in the way of running extra trains, or even the timetables trains we've already got, is Northern still have to communicate rota arrangements with drivers using a fax machine, per union rules. You can’t talk about productivity issues when centres of commerce across the north are connected by a commuter network which doesn’t have enough drivers to operate its service and routinely cancels trains en masse. Are you getting to work today? Bit of a lottery. Or when new rolling stock designed to serve the capital city for the next 40 years is ordered without Wifi, or plug sockets, or toilets. You can’t just let the system collapse into two years of strikes while you shrug your shoulders and have the Mail and the Telegraph run think pieces about greedy train drivers. Trains do matter. People do care about them. Many people outright rely on them. The new government would do well to double down on this. It’s an easy and relatively obvious way to make an immediate difference to people’s everyday lives, which they will notice. A clean, fast, reliable, electric train service, particularly between the cities in the M62 corridor which are currently connected by little more than a pony and trap, could be an enormous boon and, cynically, big vote winner. Few things rile the working people in that part of the world more than having to deal with Northern Rail and Trans Pennine Express. In the Lincolnshire market town of Brigg, population 6,000 and within easy commutable distance of Grimsby, Hull, Lincoln or Sheffield, there is a local campaign group banging the door down for a better train service. Little wonder. Tomorrow the trains from Brigg are at 11.08 and 13.49. That’s it. Two coaches go out to the seaside in the morning, turn straight around, come back the same way to Sheffield, and that’s your lot. Tomorrow morning’s service is listed as “NOT STOPPING” at Brigg. I mean, why would you? And here we are moaning when the gap on the Northern Line is more than four minutes. One train you could rely on to get you to work in Sheffield in the morning, one train you can rely on to get you home in the evening, and bang you’ve got new commuter town with acres and acres of space for new housing in a stupidly affordable part of the country to buy and a surprisingly pleasant part of the country to live. Two extra trains a day. By some quirk of the fixture list, Queens Park Rangers started 2024/25 travelling exclusively on one of the biggest policy failures on the British rail map. Sheffield, Luton, Sheffield again, Derby. East Midlands Trains. Heaven help us. The problems with East Midlands Trains, which connects four of the biggest cities in the country with London using little more than a couple of National Express coaches bolted together and sent out twice an hour in each direction, start at the start. When St Pancras International was opened it was lauded as some sort of architectural marvel. Reviews raved about the Betjemen-esque salvation of London’s great buildings from demolition. The high-speed connection from The Channel brought a welcome end to the national embarrassment of Eurostar trains trundling through Balham on the third rail into a tube stuck on the side of Waterloo. ‘Look at the roof’, people cried, after the window cleaners had been in, and the Butterley arches got a lick of paint. But it’s a botched job. The original, ambitious, expensive, plan A for this was for it to become a through station, with a dozen platforms downstairs running north to south, enabling greater capacity for the East Midlands line, the ability to extend that to destinations south of the river, and providing the capacity to run Eurostar trains from places like Leeds, Manchester and Scotland straight through to France and beyond. Instead, the Eurostar begins and ends here, and passengers wait to be called up two mechanical ramps from an airless, windowless holding area equipped with one café and a decreasingly adequate passport control centre. Most of the prime real estate is absorbed by expensive boutiques with no customers. The domestic trains north, meanwhile, are allocated four platforms in a drafty shed in the extreme northwest corner. This frequently becomes dangerously overcrowded, its tiny "concourse" area a mess of queue dividers and signs pleading for calm. Fifteen minutes before departure, because this is the rule, the entire trainload is invited to scrum through six ticket barriers. There are more signs out on the platform warning you not to sit in the back train as they frequently have to double park them and it may not be going where you think it’s going. Or anywhere at all. The trains themselves are fucking horrible. Little travelling ovens. A collection of 27, five-coach nonsenses originally built in the late 1990s. Nine carriage HSTs used to run this line but have been phased out and replaced by another clutch of five coach units which were nicked off Hull Trains when they upgraded to longer, newer rolling stock because their trains were far too short and mechanical and reliability nightmares. Thanks very much, we’ll take half a dozen of those and use them to connect Sheffield, Nottingham, Derby and Leicester with the rest of the country. What harm can come? Of the five coaches on these trains, two are entirely held over for first class. The inevitable capacity issues this creates result in the absurdity of four people being able to follow QPR away for £46 in the posh seats, or £70 in cattle class. The line has, belatedly, been electrified as far as Leicester. The trains are not electric. They trundle along, under the wires, on diesel power, belching out dark smoke. We sit outside Kettering for a bit because the Corby train needs to cross the road in front of us. It is 2024.
For the Derby game this standing joke becomes a standing joke. And a serious public health and safety hazard. QPR are taking 2,500 to Pride Park on the same day Luton are taking a similar following to Bramall Lane. The network is overwhelmed immediately. It’s carnage from early doors. One five coach train an hour is in no way adequate. People are sitting in the luggage rack. Never mind having to evacuate one of these things in an emergency, or what one of these carriages would look like if it crashed in this state, I’m worried what’s going to happen if it even brakes a little bit sharper than normal. One of ours fights to find a working toilet and when the door pulls back there are three people standing in there. The vast majority of the QPR fans going to Derby by train, a major city not a great geographical distance away, will have stood in uncomfortable, unventilated carriages, with no refreshments, and no toilets, for the best part of three hours that Saturday, and paid at least £70 each to do it. The guard apologises over the public address system to the other passengers, then blames football fans for the overcrowding. Which is nice of her. A less forgiving person than myself might have thought it blatantly fucking obvious that QPR at Derby and Luton at Sheffield on the same day might necessitate, I don’t know, an extra train or two? Or, radical thinking, sticking two of these five coach monstrosities together to make ten? But no. “Sorry about all these football fans ladies and gentlemen, coming to your cities, supporting your businesses, spending their money…” East Midlands Railway are in the process of rolling out some new trains over the next 18 months. They’re called… THE AURORA. Presumably from the same hubristic snake oil salesmen who called Reading’s main shopping arcade The Oracle. They run on electric and everything. You might think the priority with these is to get back up to the nine-coach capacity they lost when they took away all the nine coach trains, but you’d be wrong. They’ve been ordered in… five coach formation. EMR are at pains to stress the 33 units (you do the maths) ordered will mostly run joined together as ten car sets. “Mostly.” At Hillsborough and Pride Park, this becomes a theme for the day. At Sheff Wed there’s a cavity search on arrival you’d pay good money for in parts of Soho. Strange priorities in that part of the world. Bringing a can of Diet Coke in? Burn him. In a wicker man. Want to cram 5,000 people into the Leppings Lane lower? Knock yourself out. On arrival at Derby County's corner of a distant retail park the travelling thousands are funnelled through four turnstiles, but only after a prolonged bag search, pat down, pocket rummage, dog sniff and metal detect of the sort you’d usually associate with a flight to Tel Aviv. There are three stewards assigned to perform this act on 2,500 people and, with 15 minutes to go until kick off, the queue inevitably snakes most of the way back to Long Eaton. A senior steward is standing to the side scratching his flabby arse and laughing at us. Less a haircut, more a cry for help. We ask him whether he might go and assist with the strip search or get a few more bodies down there to speed things up. He says a condition of entry, stated on our ticket, is we get here an hour before the game. (It says no such fucking thing, other than mentioning the turnstiles will be open from 13.30). We ask Lord Cuntleroy if many people get here at 14,00 for a 15.00 game. He says no. “People like you” are apparently “too busy getting tanked up in the pub”. Which, again, I thought was lovely. We thank him for his professionalism and courtesy and wish him well with his day/murderous house fire. On the way back from Sheffield Wednesday, there’s a new problem. Having let the QPR masses clear while we go to Mama and Leonies and watch the world’s thickest waitress extend the lead over her rivals by listening carefully to eight separate and varied orders and then bringing out eight calzones all the same, we’ve now arrived at the station to find there are too many carriages. That’s right, having no doubt shovelled the 1,100 euphoric Rangers back to London crammed into five coaches like computer parts being shipped from Japan, EMR are now running ten coaches on the last train of the day – customer base of approximately 30 people. We take our seats in G. Because it says on our ticket we’re sitting in G. The door to G slides open, we walk into G unopposed, the lights are on and everything, the little electronic display thing has our booking, so we sit down, open the first of many train beers and prepare for the long slog back to London. Now, however, there’s a lot of screaming. And yelling. And waving of hands. There’s a tubby gent in a polyester shirt approaching the group at speed. He's got a name badge, so you know some serious shit is about to go down. G is not G. G is “locked out of use” as is “clearly indicated”, on one tiny dot-matrix display, at the other end of G, in between messages about where we’re going and the places we’re going to stop on the way. We are “in violation of railway bylaws” and must “evacuate immediately”. There is, for a small while, some lingering threat that we’re going to be thrown off altogether, to find a hotel room, and go back and see if that eejit is any better with a dessert order. Us, and the elderly white haired lady two seats down who has also committed the heinous crime of looking at her reservation in G and concluding her seat for the trip home might be in G. A chastened, rather bemused, group of half a dozen people collect our bottles of beer and copy of the Saturday Times magazine which we keep for the recipes and restaurant revises, and shuffle off to F. The commander in queef is hot on our trail. “Out. Out. Out. This carriage is locked out of use. It must be evacuated”. More yelling. I decide to be conciliatory. I ask him to calm down, point out that we’ve clearly made some sort of mistake, that it was done with no intended malice, and that we’re now, quite obviously, moving to the unoccupied carriage next door. "EVACUATE IMMEDIATELY". Feeling it’s going well, I pluck up enough courage to venture there was “really no need to speak to us like that”. I’m told in no uncertain terms that if I was a “railway inspector” (tell me how, where do I apply?) then he would have lost his license and job on the spot (tell me how, where do I apply?). I wonder whether that’s because if you lock a carriage out of use, you should actually fucking lock the thing. We thank him for his professionalism and courtesy and wish him well with his day/murderous house fire. There goes a guy in more dire need of a blow job than any white man in history. He didn’t lock the bloody thing after we’d left either, and so we passed a very amiable ride home compiling a top ten of Devon White’s goals and suggesting to any new arrivals at intermediate stations that there was “loads of space in G”. It doesn’t need to be like this. And there are decades in government for any party that realises it. From the postbagSaturday 27 July 2024 at 11:01:19 BST, Casting Real Story Studio wrote: Hi, I am a Casting Producer working on a new campaign for a well known brand, looking to reach QPR fans traveling to the game on 17th August. I thought you could be a great match, know others who are or could help in my search. We will follow their road trip and film their journey, capturing the excitement and anticipation joined by their friends/family. It’s worth mentioning, this is a paid opportunity. Interested fans can share their story and get in touch where we can chat further. It’ll be great to hear their plans. Email XXXX or WhatsApp XXXXX. We would love to hear from fans over the next few days. Thanks and have a great weekend Saturday 27 July 2024 at 11:26:45 BST, Clive Whittingham wrote: Depends who the brand is... Saturday 27 July 2024 at 16:13:10 BST, Casting Real Story Studio wrote: Hi Clive, The brand is BP. Many thanks, Scores on the doorsSheff Utd: On the pitch >>> QPR performance 6/10 >>> Sheff Utd performance 6/10 >>> Referee performance 4/10 Off the pitch >>> QPR support 7/10 >>> Home support 6/10 >>> Overall atmosphere 6/10 >>>> Stadium 8/10 >>>> Police and stewards 5/10 In the pub >>> Pubs 6/10 >>> Atmosphere 6/10 >>> Food 9/10 >>>> Cost 8/10 On the train >>> Journey 5/10 >>> Cost 5/10 Luton: On the pitch >>> QPR performance 7/10 >>> Luton performance 4/10 >>> Referee performance 7/10 Off the pitch >>> QPR support 8/10 >>> Home support 6/10 >>> Overall atmosphere 7/10 >>>> Stadium 3/10 >>>> Police and stewards 5/10 In the pub >>> Pubs 7/10 >>> Atmosphere 7/10 >>> Food 5/10 >>>> Cost 3/10 On the train >>> Journey 7/10 >>> Cost 7/10 Sheff Wed: On the pitch >>> QPR performance 4/10 >>> Sheff Wed performance 4/10 >>> Referee performance 6/10 Off the pitch >>> QPR support 7/10 >>> Home support 7/10 >>> Overall atmosphere 7/10 >>>> Stadium 7/10 >>>> Police and stewards 5/10 In the pub >>> Pubs 6/10 >>> Atmosphere 6/10 >>> Food 3/10 >>>> Cost 7/10 On the train >>> Journey 4/10 >>> Cost 5/10 Derby: On the pitch >>> QPR performance 3/10 >>> Derby performance 7/10 >>> Referee performance 6/10 Off the pitch >>> QPR support 8/10 >>> Home support 7/10 >>> Overall atmosphere 7/10 >>>> Stadium 5/10 >>>> Police and stewards 2/10 In the pub >>> Pubs 5/10 >>> Atmosphere 5/10 >>> Food 6/10 >>>> Cost 7/10 On the train >>> Journey 2/10 >>> Cost 4/10 Totals, Sheff Utd 87/140, Luton 83/140, Sheff Wed 78/140, Derby 74/1402023/24 >>> Austria Pt 1 >>> Austria Pt 2 >>> Wimbledon >>> Oxford >>> Watford/Cardiff/Middlesbrough >>> Birmingham/Leeds/Huddersfield/West Brom >>> Preston/Sheffield/Ipswich >>> Stoke/Bristol/Leicester 2022/23 >>> Blackburn/Sunderland/Charlton >>> Watford/Swansea/Millwall >>> Bristol/Sheffield/Luton 2021/22 >>> Hull/Boro 21/22 >>> Reading/Bournemouth >>> Fulham/Peterborough >>> Cardiff/Blackpool >>> Bristol/Birmingham >>> Peterborough/Coventry/Millwall >>> Barnsley/Blackburn >>> Luton/Nottingham >>> Sheffield/Preston/Huddersfield If you enjoy LoftforWords, please consider supporting the site through a subscription to our Patreon or tip us via PayPal using loftforwords@yahoo.co.uk. 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