Multi-millionaire’s are here again and QPR, the butt of many jokes over the last few years, have risen like a phoenix from the ashes. Hopefully. Ross Smith rejoices.
You’ve probably heard them all; QPR-a-ha-ha, Quarter Pound of Rubbish, Queer Park Rangers (okay that last one was a school playground throwback) or just plain old Scum. In days gone past you’ve probably had ignoramuses in Chelsea shirts asking if QPR have ever been in the “Premiere League” before. A quite regular if not unbelievable occurrence where I usually have to suppres the urge to punch the asker in the face before replying. The abuse and mockery was just part of the course of supporting QPR for the most barren and depressing spell in the club’s history.
If you were at Loftus Road on Monday night I wonder if you took in the euphoria of neon advertising and multi millionaires and media attention because you simply couldn’t fail to miss it oozing out of the arena as if the club had never been away from the top flight and the past 15 years had just been one long torrid nightmare.
But next time you’re taking your regular seat at Loftus Road away from the Sky cameras really take a good minute to take in the view of the old girl from your position. Lush green pitch, unmistakeable Lower Loft and Paddocks, and the row of executive boxes taking centre stage behind the sheet of tinted windows. Yep it’s our girl alright, a few mod cons but still the same as she always was, dependable, hospitable, uncomfortable but almost perfect.
While the memories run through your mind like a roller coaster with slow climbs and plenty of speedy drops, just imagine what you could be looking at had a last minute takeover in the late summer of 2007 not taken place. What can the darkest depths of your mind conjure as some metaphoric vision as you stare from your trusty position within the stadium? Possibly a derelict overgrown football ground, boarded up exits and entrances with urine stained concrete tainted with some unreadable graffiti tags. Some kind of mutated nature resort perhaps, donned with signs pledging prosecution for trespassers whilst a major development awaits a long drawn out approval process over at Hammersmith and Fulham council offices?
Or would it be of a vast looking building site, layered with concrete and foundation works where a restricted mix of residential and commercial dwellings are in the offering, all units pre-sold to patient waiting property investors and prospective first time buyers looking for a place to commute from and all this for a huge profit to the mystery persons behind the ABC Corporation?
That vision is something we all may witness a few years down the line, but hopefully the terms of vacation will now be forced by the need for greater things rather then by mere extinction.
The last decade has been tough being a QPR fan and has regularly tested out loyalty and, dare I say it, sanity to lengths of despair. A period which the realities of hard times were never so apparent then during a humbling 4-1 defeat in a midweek match at Peterborough in 2001 where the hostile home support goaded us with “You’re not famous anymore.” And they were right, we were still Queens Park Rangers, but we were a million miles away from the Premiership fame enjoyed at the club five years prior to that barrage of abuse. Rather like a fallen celebrity, our billing on the fixture list was more of a pantomime showing in Stockport than a red carpet reception in Leicester Square. We were a million miles away from such a return with only the light from an eerie Judas lantern to guide our drifting ship.
We are not the only club to have experienced real turgid times and found ourselves propelled by the wealth of new owners into the glittering lights of the Premier League. Reading, Wigan and Fulham were all carried into the top flight and thrust into the limelight with the owner’s intentions of establishing themselves as a long term Premiership clubs at the first time of asking.
The difference, you will remember, is that we seemed to have missed the boat on that count when new owners with similar intentions bought the club after relegation in 1996 only for it all to go so horribly wrong. But there are vast differences here, back in 1997 the Premiership was still growing and major clubs hadn’t yet experienced falling so dramatically from grace as Leeds, Manchester City, Southampton and Charlton a little later, found out. Naivety was still a common problem when it came to owning football clubs.
Tony Fernandes has bought Rangers as a Premiership club and set his stall out immediately by allowing Neil Warnock to invest in the squad. There is already talk of the club expanding and as such, has actively started tapping up the massive potential in the overseas Asian market. Big things are on the horizon now at Loftus Road – but it’s good to remember where we came from and what it’s taken to get us back to this level. Don’t dwell on negatives and take to heart from the green eye of envy from other clubs looking on and wishing us failure.
I never thought badly of Fulham when they sang “We’ll never play you again” at Craven Cottage back in 2001 as Louis Saha buried a penalty past us to further secure their promotion back to the top flight. Sure, at the time, it really hurt as we too pretty much accepted our own exit from that same division during that moment but I was also willing to accept that many of those fans had also seen their club drop like a stone with no possible solution and time after time toiled with the threat of property developers moving in on their beloved home. I just thought: ‘you lucky bastards’ and wished them well.
So now I feel lucky. Infact even five games in it hasn’t completely sunk in yet what I’m seeing on the field and it really does feel like the end of a bad dream and everything is as it was when times were good and I regrettably admit, a little taken for granted. It’s true, you don’t know what you have until it’s gone and I’ve missed watching top flight football at Loftus Road, but it has however taken me 15 years just to realise how much I’ve missed it. So please everyone, enjoy the ride, it’s going to be amazing.