As QPR travel to Hull on Saturday, LFW looks back to the start of the 1985/86 League Cup run and a two-legged success over Brian Horton’s Hull.
QPR: Green 7; Caulker 7, Ferdinand 7, Dunne 6 (Zamora 78, 5); Simpon 5 (Phillips 68, 5), Traore 6; Barton 6, Faurlin 6 (Hoilett 69, 6), Mutch 6; Remy 7, Austin 6
Subs not used: Henry, Onuoha, Hill, Murphy
Bookings: Dunne 68 (foul)
Hull: McGregor 8; Davies 7, Chester 8, Bruce 6 (McShane 45, 6); Robertson 6, Elmohamady 6; Huddlestone 6, Livermore 6, Snodgrass 6 (Quinn 40, 8); Ince 7 (Meyler 82, -), Jelavic 6
Subs not used: Brady, Figueroa, Harper, Aluko
Goals: Chester 52 (assisted Quinn)
Bookings: Davies 26 (foul), Jelavic 78 (foul)
QPR 1 Hull City 1, Monday April 25, 2011, Championship
Loftus Road was all set for a party when these sides met in April 2011, only for midtable Hull City to ruin the celebrations. Neil Warnock’s Rangers needed a win to seal promotion from the Championship and surged into an early lead when loanee Wayne Routledge scorched through on goal and hammered an opener past Matt Duke after just nine minutes. But frustration and tension set in thereafter and although Adel Taarabt had a goal disallowed for offside it was Hull who came roaring back with an emphatic finish from David Amoo down at the School End ten minutes from time. Rangers rallied and could easily have won the game anyway, had hapless substitute Patrick Agyemang not momentarily forgotten who he was and attempted a ridiculous lob finish when played through on Duke — the ball bounced off down Loftus Road towards the tube station — or Ale Faurlin’s agonising last-second free kick dipped into the bottom corner rather than being brilliantly turned around the post by Duke. The QPR fans, bizarrely, invaded the pitch anyway at the end only for a last minute winner at Carrow Road by Norwich’s Simeon Jackson to take the promotion fight to the following weekend. Rangers, though, won through in the end.
QPR: Kenny 7, Orr 6, Hall 8, Gorkss 7, Hill 7, Faurlin 7, Derry 7, Routledge 7, Taarabt 7, Smith 6 (Ephraim 67, 6), Helguson 7 (Agyemang 76, 5)
Subs Not Used: Cerny, Buzsaky, Connolly, Hulse, Shittu
Goals: Routledge 9 (assisted Taarabt)
Hull: Duke 8, Chester 6, Gerrard 7, Hobbs 7, Dawson 6, Garcia 7, Harper 6, Evans - (Akpan 12, 6), Cairney 6 (Mclean 46, 7), Simpson 6 (Amoo 71, 7), Fryatt 7
Subs Not Used: Oxley, Devitt, Solano, Belaid
Bookings: Garcia (foul), Dawson (foul), Gerrard (dissent)
Goals: Amoo (assisted Akpan) 80
Hull City 0 QPR 0, Saturday January 29, 2011, Championship
QPR and Hull drew 0-0 at the KC Stadium in January that season in a game rearranged from December when the health and safety nazis intervened to tell us what we should and shouldn’t do in the snow. Ishmael Miller had a first half goal disallowed for offside and Matty Fryatt missed a one on one chance to win the game in injury time but the big talking point of the whole match was the behaviour of Adel Taarabt who lost the plot well and truly for the only time that season. Tiring of the physical three man marking system employed against him and lack of service from his team mates he appeared to go on strike five minutes before half time refusing to play as the game went on around him. Warnock ignored his repeated requests to be substituted and then when Rangers were awarded a free kick on the edge of the area he became embroiled in a fight with Shaun Derry having suddenly shown an interest in taking it. All of which was much to the home fans’ delight as you may imagine.
Hull: Guzan 6, Rosenior 6, Chester 7, Gerrard 6, Dawson 6, Koren 6, Evans 6, Harper 7, Stewart 7 (Devitt 73, 6), Fryatt 5, Mclean 5 (Barmby 65, 6)
Subs Not Used: Duke, McShane, Cairney, Simpson, Belaid
Booked: Harper (foul)
QPR: Kenny 7, Orr 7, Gorkss 6, Connolly 6, Hill 6, Derry 7, Faurlin 5 (Moen 67, 6), Routledge 6, Taarabt 5, Smith 7 (Hulse 72, 5), Miller 7 (Ephraim 85, -)
Subs Not Used: Cerny, Hall, Chimbonda, Shittu
QPR 2 Hull City 0, Saturday November 3, 2007, Championship
Luigi De Canio got his QPR reign off to a flying start against a poor Hull City side at Loftus Road back in November 2007. A fine first half strike from Hogan Ephraim, who cut in from the left flank before curling a low right footed shot into the corner from the edge of the area, preceded a vintage Mikele Ligertwood goal after the break. There was only really one team on the pitch which makes it all the more surprising that by the end of the season Rangers had stayed in much the same position at the lower end of the table while Hull won promotion into the Premier League.
QPR: Camp 7, Mancienne 7, Cranie 8, Stewart 7, Barker 7, Rowlands 7, Ephraim 8, Leigertwood 8, Buzsaky 7 (Ainsworth 86, -),Vine 7 (Nardiello 90, -), Nygaard 7 (Bolder 81, -)
Subs Not Used: Cole, Timoska
Booked: Mancienne (foul), Barker (foul), Stewart (foul), Vine (wasting time)
Goals: Ephraim 26 (assisted Rowlands) Leigertwood 56 (assisted Ephraim)
Hull: Myhill 5, Ricketts 5, Turner 6, Brown 7, Delaney 4, Garcia 5 (McPhee 58, 6), Ashbee 4, Marney 7, Okocha 4 (Featherstone 71, 6), Windass 7, Campbell 6
Subs Not Used: Duke, Dawson, Livermore
Booked: Turner (foul), Delaney (foul)
2014/15 QPR 0 Hull 1
2010/11 QPR 1 Hull 1 (Routledge)
2010/11 Hull 0 QPR 0
2007/08 Hull 1 QPR 1 (Blackstock)
2007/08 QPR 2 Hull 0 (Ephraim, Leigertwood)
2006/07 Hull 2 QPR 1 (Blackstock)
2006/07 QPR 2 Hull 0 (Blackstock, Jones)
2005/06 QPR 2 Hull 2 (Ainsworth 2)
2005/06 Hull 0 QPR 0
1991/92 QPR 5 Hull 1* (Thompson 2, Bailey 2, Bardsley)
1991/92 Hull 0 QPR 3* (Barker 2, Thompson)
1985/86 Hull 1 QPR 5* (Kerslake 2, Rosenior 2, Fillery)
1985/86 QPR 3 Hull 0* (Kerslake, Dawes, Bannister)
1972/73 QPR 1 Hull 1 (Bowles)
1972/73 Hull 4 QPR 1 (Givens)
1971/72 Hull 1 QPR 1 (O’Rourke)
1971/72 QPR 2 Hull 1 (O’Rourke, I Morgan)
1970/71 QPR 1 Hull 1 (Marsh)
1970/71 Hull 1 QPR 1 (Leach)
1969/70 Hull 1 QPR 2 (Marsh, Clarke)
1969/70 QPR 3 Hull 0 (Clark, Clarke, Leach)
1967/68 QPR 1 Hull 1 (Marsh)
1967/68 QPR 2 Hull 1* (Leach, Keen)
1967/68 Hull 2 QPR 0
1965/66 QPR 3 Hull 3 (Collins 3)
1965/66 Hull 1 QPR 3 (Allen 2, R Morgan)
1964/65 Hull 3 QPR 1 (McAdams)
1964/65 QPR 2 Hull 1 (Keen McAdams)
1963/64 Hull 3 QPR 0
1963/64 QPR 0 Hull 2
1962/63 Hull 4 QPR 1 (Leary)
1962/63 QPR 4 Hull 1 (Bedford 3, Lazarus)
1961/62 Hull 3 QPR 1 (Bedford)
1961/62 QPR 1 Hull 1 (Francis)
1960/61 QPR 2 Hull 1 (Bedford, Keen)
1960/61 Hull 3 QPR 1 (Bedford)
1958/59 QPR 1 Hull 1 (Whitelaw)
1958/59 Hull 1 QPR 0
1951/52 Hull 4 QPR 1 (Smith)
1951/52 QPR 1 Hull 1 (Smith)
1950/51 QPR 3 Hull 1 (Farrow 2, Smith)
1950/51 Hull 5 QPR 1 (Hatton)
1949/50 Hull 1 QPR 1 (Mills)
1949/50 QPR 1 Hull 4 (Duggan)
* - League Cup
Mark Hateley >>> QPR 1995-1997 >>> Hull City 1997-1998
Well, let's get the mitigation out of the way nice and early shall we? Replacing Les Ferdinand at QPR was always going to be an impossible job. Roberto Baggio may have made a decent fist of it, had there been any shred of truth in the London Evening Standard's most infamous backpage transfer splash, but otherwise Ray Wilkins' task of replacing the talismanic centre forward who'd scored 91 goals in 171 starts for our little, unfashionable West London club was a daunting one.
However, you could probably have hazarded a decent guess that Mark Hateley, aged 34 when he moved to Loftus Road from the Rangers north of the border, would struggle to fit the bill. The Ferdinand departure left QPR 25 goals short and until Hateley pitched up they had only youth team graduates Kevin Gallen and Danny Dichio as striking options. In the end, Wilkins pushed winger Trevor Sinclair into action as a centre forward to try and salvage the situation.
Hateley, who'd played with Wilkins for England, Milan and Rangers, may well have been a decent fit for QPR earlier in his career. A big, bustling, awkward centre forward, he'd scored regularly throughout Europe — 17 goals in 66 starts for Milan when Serie A was a fearsome division, 22 in 59 at Monaco, 111 in 214 Rangers outings before the SPL became a standing joke. Fanzine A Kick Up The R's carried an alternative version of Oasis' Wonderwall: "Mark Hateley, are you gonna be the one who saves me? Cos afterall, Les was wonderful." But by the time he got to Loftus Road , for £1.4m which, back in 1995, was a serious wedge for a club like QPR, he was physically shot. In fact, having signed in November, he was introduced to the home crowd on the field at half time of a Monday Night Football encounter with Tottenham, appearing on the hallowed turf propped up by a pair or crutches. Another thorough Rangers medical that one.
Wilkins' men led 2-0 that night with half an hour to go but Spurs, bossed by Wilkins' predecessor Gerry Francis and aided by a scandalous penalty award by David Ellery for Teddy Sheringham diving over the back of Karl Ready as the defender turned away to play the ball, roared back to win 3-2. Rangers had only won two of their first seven games prior to that and although a Danny Dichio header a week later gave them a third success at newly promoted Bolton they were clearly in big trouble.
Hateley finally made his debut in 1-1 home draw with Middlesbrough at the start of December, winning a penalty which Simon Barker promptly skied over the bar. He would go on to make just 15 appearances that season as the R's were relegated for the first time in a generation, and he scored just two goals at Wimbledon and in a 3-1 home win against Everton.
By the end of the campaign the crowd was firmly set against the former England front man. Painfully slow, apparently overweight, terminally injury prone, and almost completely useless on the football field, he looked and played like one of those bedraggled ponies you sometimes find tethered on council estates and was seen as an expensive liability, who was often found wanting for effort. Despite all of this, he seemed supremely arrogant.
Hateley started the first game of the First Division season at home to Oxford United but it was only when he was removed and replaced by Dichio that Rangers were able to come back from a goal down to win 2-1. Thereafter he miraculously managed to get himself a loan move back into the Premier League at Leeds United where he was fit to play just six times in the first three months of the season — needless to say, without scoring a goal.
By the time he came back to W12 his mate Wilkins had left the club in acrimonious circumstances. The new chairman Chris Wright had thrown money at the likes of John Spencer and Gavin Peacock to bolster the attack, and recruited Arsenal coach Stewart Houston as his first manager. Hateley was used sparingly (mercifully) but did notch a fine late equaliser in an FA Cup Third Round tie against Huddersfield at Loftus Road. He responded to this by racing across to the South Africa Road side of the ground cupping his ear at the supporters who'd previously been heckling him, as if one goal against Huddersfield made up for the previous 12 months.
He subsequently scored in a league game at Swindon and then - the pinnacle of his time with the club - banged in a flying header in the fifth round of the cup at Wimbledon when 12,000 QPR fans had taken over Selhurst Park for the day. On both occasions, he goaded the QPR supporters with his ear cupping celebration. Such brash arrogance of a man who was paid handsomely by QPR despite being physically incapable of doing his job properly hardly endeared him to the Shepherd's Bush public any further and there were street parties and dancing on tables aplenty when QPR managed to not only get him a permanent deal back at Glasgow Rangers, but also got £300,000 miraculously slung into the bargain. On his second debut for Rangers, against bitter rivals Celtic, he was sent off for headbutting Stewart Kerr.
The second spell at Ibrox ended that summer, after four appearances and one goal. He moved back south of the border to join Hull City, then in the Third Division, as a player manager.
Hull, playing at a crumbling Boothferry Park stadium, had been in the doldrums for some time. Destitute and on the brink of bankruptcy off the field, and drearily managed by Terry Dolan on it, the Tigers were circling the drain and had been for some time. When former tennis pro David Lloyd, who'd made an apparent fortune with his leisure clubs since retiring, bought the club and neighbouring rugby league outfit Hull FC in 1997 he promised a bright new era for both, playing in a shiny new shared stadium in the city.
He spent big appointing Hateley and Billy Kirkwood as the best paid managerial team in the bottom two divisions. Given the size of the rebuilding job required at City, fans seemed happy enough to give the pair a free ride in 1997/98, Hateley's first full season as a manager. Just as well really, because Hull were every bit as bad as they'd been under Dolan and arguably worse. They finished third bottom, saved from relegation out of the Football League by the collapse of Doncaster Rovers who finished dead last with 20 points and a goal difference of -83. Doncaster lost 8-0 to Forest, 5-0 to Peterborough , 5-1 to Darlington, 4-0 at Scarborough, 8-0 to Leyton Orient and 7-1 to Cardiff . They won just four games all season, only one of them away — the final victory of those four was a 1-0 success against Hateley's Hull at Belle Vue snapping a run of eight straight defeats in which they'd conceded 25 goals. Hateley played 14 times that season scoring none.
Anyway, 1998/99 was Hateley's second stab at the job and big things were expected. They stated with a home defeat by Rotherham and a loss at home to Darlington before drawing 2-2 at Chester . Their first win of the season, and Hateley's only goal for the club at Boothferry Park (he managed only three in total), came against Peterborough at the end of August. The goal came from the penalty spot, and the victory owed more to the fine form of goalkeeper Steve Wilson. A more detailed recollection, and some dodgy highlights, available at the excellent Amber Nectar blog.
When the plans for the ground were not backed by the council — wary of handing money for a significant asset straight to Lloyd — and things did not go right on the field for ether club, Lloyd was hounded out by both sets of supporters, locking them out of their grounds as he went. Not a man who should drop into the Silver Cod for a swift half any time soon. A consortium led by Tom Belton bought the club from Lloyd in October by which time Hateley's side had won three and lost 11 of their first 19 matches. Following a home defeat by Leyton Orient in November, Belton's first act as chairman was to sack Hateley and appoint experienced midfielder Warren Joyce in his stead. Hull finished fourth bottom in 1998/99, four points ahead of relegated Scarborough.
Still he tried to plough on. A spell with mighty Ross County at the start of 1999/00 in the Scottish second division brought two appearances, no goals and an early release.
Still sporting ridiculous hair, even more ludicrous earrings, and a strong sense of self worth and importance, Hateley can now be found in television studios mouthing off about how other people in football should be doing their jobs.
Others >>> Jay Simpson, QPR (loan) 2009-2010, Hull 2010-2013 >>> Damien Delaney, Hull 2002-2008, QPR 2008-2009 >>> Rowan Vine, QPR 2007-2012, Hull (loan) 2010 >>> Simon Walton, QPR 2007-2008, Hull (loan) 2008 >>> Jason Jarrett, Hull (Loan) 2006, QPR (loan) 2007 >>> Adam Bolder, Hull 1998-2000, QPR 2007-2009 >>> Dean Marney, QPR (loan) 2004, Hull City 2006-2010 >>> Nick Culkin, Hull (loan) 1999-2000, QPR 2002-2005 >>> Wayne Brown, QPR (loan) 2001, Hull 2007-2009 >>> Ernest Shepherd, Hull 1948-1950, QPR 1950-1956 >>> Terry Peacock, Hull 1952-1956, QPR 1956-1958 >>> John Collier, Hull 1920-1925, QPR 1926-1927
QPR had not had a happy 1984/85 season. Losing inspirational manager Terry Venables to Barcelona after he’d taken the Second Division R’s to the FA Cup Final in 1982, promotion a year later and then a fifth place finish in the first season back in the First Division was clearly a blow. Replacing him with, briefly, former favourite Gordon Jago and then, disastrously, Alan Mullery, exacerbated the situation.
The R’s limped through the second half of 1984/85 with Frank Sibley in caretaker charge, eventually narrowly avoiding relegation fourth bottom. That summer the R’s swopped on Oxford, newly promoted into the First Division, for their manager Jim Smith, who’d masterminded the O’s success but then fallen out with chairman Robert Maxwell about the lack of a new contract offer and left the Manor Ground.
In his first season at Loftus Road, Smith would take QPR to Wembley in the League Cup. That run started in the second round at Hull City, a two legged tie won convincingly 8-1 on aggregate. At Loftus Road in the first leg David Kerslake, Ian Dawes and Gary Bannister scored in a 3-0 win which set up a relatively comfortable second leg at the old Boothferry Park ground.
Hull City were under the management of Brian Horton and playing in the old Second Division. They’d started the season slowly, just two league wins from the first eight matches but a first round victory over two legs against Halifax Town to win them a trip to Shepherd’s Bush in the cup. Defeats against Norwich and Stoke had followed the first leg, but they had beaten Crystal Palace and faced a much changed QPR side second time around.
It made little difference. Kerslake and Leroy Rosenior helped themselves to two goals each and Mike Fillery added another in front of 4,287 fans.
Smith’s side faced a tougher task in Round Three with a 1-0 win at Watford, and then beat Nottingham Forest 3-1 at Loftus Road. A memorable quarter final replay victory at Stamford Bridge against Chelsea — Michael Robinson scoring from the halfway line — set up a two legged semi-final against Liverpool. Terry Fenwick won the home leg 1-0, two own goals at Anfield sent the R’s to Wembley in memorable style.
And there in wait, lay Oxford, and one of the most ignominious defeats in the history of the club — Jim Smith seemingly more delighted than most of the Oxford players and staff that his old side had won 3-0.
QPR: Barron; McDonald, Wicks, Fenwick, Dawes; Kerslake, Waddock, Allen, Fillery (Byrne); Bannister, Rosenior
The Twitter @loftforwords
Pictures — Action Images