LFW reports from the annual player of the year dinner where Damion Stewart deservedly stole the headlines by collecting the two main awards but ultimately the whole evening left a sour taste in the mouth and further highlighted the split between players, fans and club.
Dinner is served
Now it has been a while since I went to the end of season awards, in fact unless my memory is playing tricks on me the last time I was there was when my dad came to fetch me from my room upstairs and snuck me in to see him win the Supporter of the Year award. That’s still one of the best moments of my life strangely enough and following his death tragically soon after that the trophy still as pride of place in my house.
Anyway our little travelling group of my brother Paul, friends Tracy and Charlotte and myself have been saying for a few seasons that we would go to one together and we decided some time ago that this would be the one. I knew what to expect – it would be expensive, the food would be poor and the players would leave at the first possible opportunity – and in that respect I certainly was not disappointed. We manage to have a pretty great day out every week regardless of QPR rather than because of them though so I figured we would do the same again here and I wasn’t really disappointed on that front either. I’d say any evening that ends with you trying to scale the perimeter fence and “take a short cut” across the runway at Heathrow Airport at four in the morning has gone reasonably well (or terribly wrong) and so it turned out to be the case.
Paul, Tracy and myself enjoying the evening/getting bladdered
So let’s pick up the story where the match report left off. QPR ended a dire match by wasting a final chance to deliver a decent cross into the box – a short free kick was played instead and Peter Ramage turfed the ball high into the Loft. The final whistle was met with a mixture of boos, exasperated cries of anguish and sighs of blessed relief that it was all over. Ordinarily we would stay and applaud the players around the field but because we were going to the dinner and had to change a swift exit was required. It was very apparent though that almost everybody was leaving as well and I’m told that such a small amount of supporters stayed behind the lap of the pitch was hardly worthwhile. That surprises me because even after the most horrendous of home defeats there is a good portion of fans that stay and clap the players anyway long after the angry boo boys have gone and even when we have been relegated in the past several thousand have stayed behind to applaud.
While all that was going on we had a quick trot to the new overground station at Shepherds Bush which, with a large bag full of suits and shoes, wasn’t the happiest ten minutes of my life in the blazing heat. Anyway train successfully made we changed at Clapham Junction for the train to Staines where we would change at Tracy’s flat and later on spend the night in her spare room that her fella James had kindly tidied for us.
We’d made good time, arriving in the flat just after six, and that meant that Paul and myself could watch and swear at our useless Rugby League team in their quest to end of a six game losing stretch at Salford. They managed it, but the game wasn’t much better than our dire encounter with Plymouth earlier in the day and by the middle of the second half the ironing of shirts was certainly more interesting. Once we were ready and the two points were in the bag James drove us the fifteen or twenty minutes round to the other side of Heathrow and the Radisson Hotel – I mention the journey time because it will become a bone of contention later.
The hotel was on the main road next to the runway and seemed very nice when we arrived. Staff directed us up a sweeping staircase to the third floor where pre-meal drinks were being served in a huge glass roofed area with various water features that would look a whole lot better without the naff plastic fish scattered throughout. Now, first complaint of the evening, I know London is expensive and I know hotels in London are extortionate but I’m sorry £4.50 for a bottle of Grolsch? That’s an absolute joke.
The players started to arrive at this stage, posing for photographs and signing autographs as they went. There was some stick for Kaspars Gorkss who had arrived in a cardigan and overall the mood seemed pretty good. I can’t remember the time, possibly about half eight, but eventually somebody from the hotel made a very loud noise on an enormous drum and announced that our dinner was about to be served and we should all make our way through to the dining area. Now that was a large room adjacent to the atrium but was very different because with no glass roof and thick velvet curtains all around it was almost completely pitch black in there. The tables were pretty crammed together in a semi circle around the stage at the front. Plasma screens were dotted around the place for people who didn’t have the best view and thankfully there was no sign of the rumoured ‘second room’ that some supporters were told they would be in had they bought tickets late on.
We were sitting with Phil from Sheffield and his date for the evening but the other six seats on our table started vacant and remained so. Paul quipped that they had probably turned up, seen they were sitting with “that twat from the website” and immediately turned round and gone home. Anyway it turned out to be a result because we quickly polished off the extra bread and Tracy set sail on the extra table wine.
The table next to ours was vacant as well, we were starting to worry that we smelt at this point, but it quickly became apparent that this was going to be a table for some of the players and sure enough as the starters began to flow out of the kitchen Fitz Hall, Mikele Leigertwood, Wayne Routledge, Patrick Agyemang, Damion Stewart, Rowan Vine, Ramone Rose and one or two others took their seats next door to us. Now I’ve seen some of these players given bad press for their behaviour on the night on other message boards and I feel bad for singling them out myself but I’m afraid, as they were the ones sitting near me, I’ve little choice.
Akos Buzsaky and Kaspars Gorkss react with astonishment as the club find enough highlights to run a goal of the season contest
After the starters were finished and cleared several of these players immediately got up and left the room leaving Matt Connolly deep in conversation with one of the younger players and an otherwise empty table. This wasn’t a big problem as many people took this opportunity to head out for a drink refill or smoke (I have always wondered about people who can’t make it through a starter and main without a cigarette but never mind) and nobody really thought anything of it. However when people started to come back in and the main courses arrived the players did not return immediately. In fact they did not return at all. Their main courses remained on the table for the best part of half an hour untouched. Rowan Vine, sporting grey suit and bright red neckerchief, came back in after a while and had a laugh with Connolly about not calling him back in and his dinner getting cold but that was it.
The players only returned to the table when the actual awards ceremony started after the food. Now I’m sorry, maybe I’m being needlessly miserable and old fashioned, but to eat a starter and then bugger off to lounge around looking bored in a bar area leaving the table and the rest of your food untouched is rude. Be you a footballer at a player of the year dinner or a five year old kid at home with his family it’s just rude.
Anyway that gripe out the way and it was time for the awards. Billy Rice compered and the first thing he asked was for the players to stand up and receive the applause of the fans for their efforts this season. Again I am sorry to report that the players on the table next to ours remained seated, bored almost, and completely ignored this request. Now at this point I will openly admit that I know the players must hate this event, they don’t want to be there, they don’t want to stand up and receive applause because it is embarrassing, but come on lads for goodness sake, play the game for one night will you?!
Amit Bhatia said a few words, and admitted he expected to be “bollocked” by a few fans afterwards but credit to him he was open, honest and available to fans until the small hours of the morning – long after the players and other senior staff members had gone home.
Rice then introduced Rodney Marsh as our host for the evening which was a pleasant surprise for me as I wasn’t aware he was going to be there. Marsh began with a story from is playing career with Rangers when, as a Third Division player, he was approached by a News of the World journalist offering him a lot of money to do a story on him under the headline “Alf, I’m ready for England.” Marsh asked QPR manager Alec Stock what he thought and was told not to do it – Stock said Ramsey would think Marsh arrogant and life would become very difficult for him out on the pitch against rough house Third Division centre backs. Marsh accepted his word, went out on Saturday and scored several times (I think he said four) in a 6-2 win against Tranmere, woke up on Sunday and picked up the paper to read the headline “Alf, Stan is ready for England” by Alec Stock. That raised more than a laugh than his joke about the homeless man shagging a girl he found on the railway tracks anyway.
Marsh was asked to do an auction for the Community Trust and although he found it hard to pick out the bidders through the darkness with stage lights shining straight into his face a good amount of money was raised for a place in the squad next season (got to be better than the strikers we have now whoever you are) and a night at home with Rodney and his female assistants cooking you dinner. Less money was raised however for a signed Adrian Mutu shirt. Another moan I’m afraid – whose sodding idea was that? How hard would it have been to get Les Ferdinand, Stan Bowles and Marsh to sign a QPR shirt for auction? I despair sometimes. Adrian Mutu? Do me a bloody favour.
By this time Marsh was making repeated reference to the time – “don’t worry lads we’ll be done on time”, “11pm finish lads I promise” and so on. The awards started at half past ten, or thereabouts, and first of all came the community award presented by Andy Evans from the charitable arm of the club. I have only met Andy for the first time very recently but he comes across very well and the work he is doing with is team at the club is admirable. One of the highlights of the season for me was seeing the Downs Syndrome Tiger Cubs on the field at half time playing football and getting a rousing reception from the crowd. Children with that condition thrive on such positive attention and it was wonderful to see the club giving them a chance to experience something like that. Andy spoke about this, and showed the Community Trust video that is well worth seeing if you haven’t already – it’s on QPR World I believe. Sadly Andy was briefly interrupted by some idiot shouting out that we don’t care about the community, we only give a toss about what is going on on the pitch. A great shame.
Gareth Ainsworth won the community award to a standing ovation. QPR have doubled their player visits in the community to 150 this year, Matt Connolly was shown on the film out on one such visit, and Gareth has been the driving force behind that.
There was no supporter of the year presentation because the winner of the award this year, Fred Perry, was not at the event. I have not had the pleasure of meeting Fred before but having read this post on our message board it is clear that he is a worthy winner and although he wasn’t there to collect the award I think it would have been nice for the story and reasons for the decision to have been announced, if only to make sure the players hear some of the sacrifices we make to come and support them every week.
Anyway it was then time for the awards proper. Goal of the season went to Martin Rowlands for his screamer against Wolves. Rowly was the only player awarded on the evening who actually gave a speech – joking that he scores goals like that all the time in training and expressing a desire to be back in action as soon as possible.
Young player of the year went to Matt Connolly who received his award from Gianni Paladini. The Sporting Director, in typical style it must be said, seemed to offer Matt a new contract on stage in front of everybody – Connolly is clearly used to him, he just laughed, put his arm around his shoulder and posed for the pictures. He didn’t make a speech, but as I haven’t been to one of these for some time I’m not sure if it’s normal for the Young Player of the Year to speak or not. I suspect not.
Matt Connolly collects his award from Gianni Paladini and Rodney Marsh
Players Player of the Season and Supporters Player of the Season both went to Damion Stewart with Kaspars Gorkss runner up in the latter. Now there were no speeches here either which surprised me. I know Damion is a very shy person and speaking in front of a large group is probably his worst nightmare but I’m sure with some gentle questioning from Billy Rice we could have at least had a thank you out of him or something – anything!
That brought us up to 11pm, Rodney Marsh again joked that he told them he’d be done on time and at that point the players left en masse with, in my opinion, indecent haste. Within ten minutes of the awards finishing there were only a handful of players left – Gareth Ainsworth and Lee Cook as you would expect, Antonio German and Kaspars Gorkss also I’m told but essentially everybody else had left. Some were going straight home, others had taxis booked for 11pm to go clubing. Again I’m sorry to pick out individuals but Hall, Leigertwood, Routledge and Agyemang clearly couldn’t wait to leave all night, stayed at their table for the starter course and the awards only and then waltzed straight out at the first possible opportunity. These were the players sitting closest to me and probably feel unfairly criticised but these are also some of the club’s top earners and I don’t think manners, the odd smile, some common courtesy and the like is too much to ask of somebody we are paying £15k a week to really.
Anyway that left the supporters at a Player of the Year dinner with no players. Gareth Ainsworth was wonderful, having his picture taken with everybody and chatting wit anybody who wanted to. Lee Cook did likewise and when people wonder why some players get harsh criticism from fans while Cook is often cut slack for poor performances this is a good example – he understands what being a QPR fan is about and understands how much it means to people to have a quick chat or a photograph with him once a year.
Lee Cook olds court with the fans
I spent the rest of my evening pickling myself in £4.50 bottles of Grolsch, and talking about football with Neil who coaches the ladies team at Rangers, posts on our message board and takes photographs – some of which can be seen with this article, the rest are posted at this link. Now at the risk of making Neil blush an evening spent talking about football with him is never an evening wasted and even though I was rat arsed and he probably wished I’d fallen in the water or something so he could talk to somebody else I thoroughly enjoyed setting the world to rights with him. Sadly while that was going on Tracy, looking the worse for too much table wine, tottered off down the stairs – we thought, to the toilet. She was never seen again.
As people started to leave, head back to their rooms or decamp to the bar downstairs Paul and myself started to wonder where Tracy might have got to because we were relying on her for a lift back to Staines and, more importantly, a bed for the night. An extensive search of all four floors of the hotel and a variety of female bathrooms (apologies to anybody we scared) produced nothing and so at about 3am we stood outside the hotel on the main road a party member down, with no taxi in sight, no money for a room and no lift back to our beds.
Now you do some silly things when you are drunk and to be fair Terminals One, Two and Three did not look too far away. If I remember rightly we had intended to sleep there for the evening - we have spent an evening in the terminal building at Gatwick before - and then get an early bus out to Staines. The problem with that is there is no way of walking from the Radisson to that part of the airport with the road tunnel linking the two under the runway lacking pedestrian access. We contemplated cutting across the runway but had by now attracted the attention of airport police and so decided instead to try and walk round the back of the runway out by the M25 and sleep in Terminal Five instead. It took us the best part of an hour to get out there on foot and sadly the terminal building is positioned in such a way that you have to walk a good 1500 metres past it to go back and after being talked down from another perimeter fence by Paul I then agreed with him that it was probably for the best if we just walked to Staines as we only had four more miles to go and we figured we had walked at least that already. “We’ve made some poor decisions,” I said to Phil when he rang to check on us. A gross understatement.
A taxi rescued us eventually, not before we’d done another couple of miles on foot, but when we arrived back at the flat there was no sign of either Tracy or James. It turns out she had surfaced at the 24 our McDonalds near the hotel and rung James to get him to pick her up. They found us asleep on some concrete steps somewhere. Two hours later and it was up and off again for the train back to Sheffield.
Me with Mygen and Neil - thanks to Neil for the photographs
The fallout and possible improvements
Now there was much hand wringing and over reaction on the night and that has been repeated across the message boards regarding the behaviour of the players. Here’s a fact for all those that claim to be fuming by the behaviour of our squad on the night – the players have always left the player of the year dinner early. I remember my mum kicking off with our Premiership squad of 1994 because they were all shooting off before the end and even when the likes of Chris Day, Marc Bircham and Kevin Gallen were still there dancing away until three in the morning none of the other squad members were.
Players have always left early, and as it goes I don’t think 11pm is particularly early considering it started at 7.30pm. It is to be remembered that these players are not happy at the moment – they have just had another manager sacked, worrying rumours abound about why Rowan Vine and Hogan Ephraim were not selected on Saturday, several of them have been individually singled out for very harsh treatment by the fans, they have been booed from the field at half time and full time religiously all season. They are human beings, moral is low and I don’t see why they should be expected to put all that aside and be all happy and smiley until two in the morning with the same drunk football fans that have been so harsh on them.
I think I’d hate this event as a player. A few pictures and autographs is fine but there is a lot of groupyism going on – people who the players obviously don’t know from Adam acting like they are their best mates, chatting away to clearly bored young men about nonsense. Does a player really want to be asked about how he enjoyed his loan spell earlier in the season while he is in the gents toilets for example? I think not.
However I do think the attitude of many of them left a lot to be desired. Buggering off for an hour between the starter until the awards to lounge about on sofas outside was poor form, as was their body language and attitude all night. Particularly, as I said, as it was our better paid longer contracted players doing it. However low moral is and whatever they think of the supporters they are paid very well by QPR and I don’t think it is too much to ask to at least by polite and civil for an evening. Quite a few of them need to have a good look at themselves to be honest – how much have they earned this season and what have they given us for that?
For me this event, which I very much doubt I will be attending again for the foreseeable future, could be improved in several ways. Firstly on the player front they need to have some rules set down about how long they stay, what is expected of them and that one night in the entire season is not too much for them to give up. I’m sure our players have plenty of chances to go out clubing all year round without blatantly clock watching through a dinner with supporters and then racing off in pre-booked taxis. That was piss poor form for me.
I would also bring back the idea of a player sitting on each table with the supporters. That, I have no doubt, would be hugely unpopular with the players but I think it would help the atmosphere, held the mood and help supporters meet the players face to face and perhaps understand things from their point of view and vice versa. It would also break up the cliques of players that clearly existed on the night and were perhaps a little intimidating for fans wanting to approach players for an autograph or picture.
Myself with Sheffield Steve, a feared duo on the railways between London and the Steel City
Overall the event reinforced the growing divide between the club, its players and the supporters. The fans abuse the players who under-perform, the club charges the fans astronomical amounts for a poor product, the players see managers and coaches appointed and sacked, find themselves dropped for non-football reasons and are backed into corners by their employers who forbid them from being honest with supporters and the media over what the hell is going on. It’s a terribly unhappy club at the moment I’m afraid and there are so many bridges that need to be built if next season isn’t to be a total disaster.
The event could also be improved with better food and cheaper drinks. If that cannot be achieved for a large event at a hotel in London then fair enough, give us some more for our money. The players should have to give a speech no matter how shy they are, there should be a band on and maybe even a stand up as well. Had the awards been preceded and proceeded with a stand up and the night finished with a good band would we all be moaning about the players leaving early? No. The club just doesn’t think things through or understand what supporters want – as the Adrian Mutu shirt fiasco proved.
Ultimately, while Bhatia, Ainsworth, Cook and one or two others came out with credit, the whole thing was a bit of a disappointing dead loss. Much like most of the season really. I’ll be keeping my £70 to myself next year.