Same old story on the pitch but off it a pleasant surprise - a decent bar to drink in right in the middle of Wolverhampton.

1 - The Match

Wolves needed a victory to seal promotion to the Premiership and, as with West Brom, Crewe, Plymouth and others before them, QPR proved to be ideal cannon fodder for the big occasion. There were scares along the way, Rangers matched Wolves in many departments and hit the bar through Rowan Vine shortly after falling behind, but this was billed as Wolves’ big day and so it proved. A fine save from Radek Cerny denied Edwards a goal before half time but a bad mistake by Damion Stewart straight after the break let Keogh in to set up Ebanks-Blake for the winner. Thousands of Wolves fans poured onto the field at the end of the game to celebrate with their team at the end of a long but ultimately successful season. QPR made all the right noises afterwards about being inspired by the Wolves’ party and wanting some of that for themselves next season but the home side showed on and off the field on Saturday that Rangers still have much to do to match even them, never mind Premiership sides to which we apparently aspire.

6/10


2 - QPR Performance

A perfect example of QPR’s shortcomings on the field this season. Against the likely champions of this league on their own patch Rangers went stride for stride and matched them in many departments. The defence looked reasonably solid, the midfield likewise, and but for a mistake by Damion Stewart Rangers could easily have taken a point from the match with Wolves having few complaints. However the key difference, as it has been all season, is the lack of a quality goal scorer in the QPR ranks. Wolves got one gilt edged chance and took it, Heider Helguson hit QPR’s straight at Wayne Hennessey in the Wolves goal. There was some bad luck involved in the defeat as well - Rowan Vine’s deflected shot could easily have dipped in or dropped to Jordi Lopez in the six yard box but ultimately came off the cross bar and went away to safety. Overall more of the same - solid at the back but for one mistake, solid but lacking creativity across the middle, and pretty limp up front.

5/10


3 - QPR Support

You may think that travelling to Wolverhampton to watch the toothless locals celebrate in your face after a match that, even had we pulled off an unlikely victory, meant absolutely nothing is not the most constructive use of time and money on a sunny Saturday but you’d be wrong. QPR travelled in half decent numbers, certainly more than I was expecting, and came up with some decent come backs to the wall of noise emanating from the home ends including a “first time at Molineux” chant presumably aimed at the hangers on who snapped up all the late tickets and forced Wolves to move us from our original position in the side stand to a block of seats behind the goal. Hard to make yourself heard over 28,000 others or have the energy to even try with QPR so dull to watch this season but the travelling fans did reasonably well.

6/10


4 - Atmosphere

As I have remarked many times before it is possible to play the home crowd at Wolves to your advantage as an away team far easier than it is elsewhere. Wolves will always come out firing and if you can hold them off for that initial quarter of an hour then the crowd will shut up and then, if you survive another 15 minutes or even take the lead, will start abusing their own players. Things were slightly different on Saturday because of the prize riding on the game and although the noise did die down midway through the first half as QPR did a reasonable job of holding Wolves at arms length the usual stick directed at home players and manager never materialised. It may have done in the second half had QPR repeated the trick of the first but sadly Damion Stewart made a terrible error within a minute of the restart and with only one winner from that point the crowd seemed to relax a bit, pausing for breath only when Rowan Vine hit the bar and Hogan Ephraim stuck a late free kick over the bar.

Points off for the pre-match build up which included the cringe worthy spectacle of fans being taught their new anthem with words from a singing card. Apparently, according to the programme, a committee had been working hard for some time on this idea and come up with ‘The Impossible Dream’ with one word changed to Wolves and another to Molineux. Nice work if you can get it. Football songs are spur of the moment things, they are not to be decided by a committee or on a message board in advance and most certainly not to be printed on hint cards and handed out to supporters. The Wolves supporter I travelled to the game with described it as “cringeworthy” and I couldn’t have put it better myself. On a day when your team is about to be promoted the atmosphere will rock and roll quite enough without a bloody sing a long thank you very much.

7/10


5 - The Ground

I was interested to read in the matchday programme Jez Moxey the Wolves CEO bemoaning the limitations of Molineux that was the first ground totally redeveloped after the Taylor Report. He pinpointed space on concourses and toilets as a problem and implied they would certainly do things differently if they were building it again now. That surprised me really because I have never found a problem on the Molineux concourses and didn’t on Saturday either - he was referring to the upper tier of the Steve Bull stand in fairness which we have never sat in so perhaps it is an issue up there. I much prefer being behind the goal to down the side - less spit for a start - because the view was a lot better and the exit is closer to the train station. The tickets are also cheaper and credit to Wolves for making a difficult situation work at short notice - QPR fans were moved, accommodated and refunded in cash at the turnstile all within the space of four days when they realised they needed more tickets for home fans. Many clubs, ours included, would have faffed around and made a mess of such short notice arrangements so credit to them for that. Molineux isn’t too bad as new grounds go, although it would be improved greatly if they were to embark on a Sheff Utd type project to fill in the corners.

7/10


6 - The Journey

Well it seems Owain may have caught the bug. Despite only seeing QPR win once in six attempts this season, and being present for the dire Coventry City match played in Arctic conditions in January he keeps coming back and decided to come down with us for this one as well. We were scheduled to be on the 1123 train from Sheffield however he managed to miss that by a good five minutes and was subsequently reprimanded - if he’s to become a regular we can’t have tardiness with pubs to visit and connections to make. Anyway with no lunchtime match to watch that didn’t matter greatly this time so we pitched into Birmingham New Street at about 1pm instead of half 12. Good God that place doesn’t improve much does it? What a hell hole. We arrived on one pitch black platform, got directed to another identical one where a train to Wolves was supposed to be but wasn’t, then missed another one by a minute as a result and finally managed, after a run in with a typically surly and obnoxious woman on the ticket gate, to get on some rattly train bound for Wales.


After the match we managed to get an earlier train back to Birmingham than we had initially planned but all that succeeded in doing was plunging us back into the black hole of the “second city” for a longer period of time. Eternal darkness, piles of concrete, obnoxious ticket guards, lobotomised bouncers on the door of the grimy station bar. God I hate it. Stories about them pulling it down continue to circulate, but I think they are perhaps just building our hopes up. In the interests of getting the hell out of there as quickly as possible we jumped on a slow train to Derby which meant another change, and we only ended up on the same train we would have caught anyway, but it was a relief to be out of there for another season at least.


We travelled home with Trev the Wolves fan who didn’t gloat and was actually quite relaxed and chatty for somebody whose team had just been promoted. He also agreed with us about the ‘People’s Republic of Wolverhampton’ mass sing-a-long before the match too.

4/10


7 - Pre Match

Normally Wolves is just about the worst place we have for pre-match all season. Our wish to watch the lunch time Sky football restricts us to four dark and filthy pubs around the city centre. However with no game to speak of on Saturday we were able to avoid the dank, bouncer guarded caverns and head into the Quadrant Lounge which had a decent mix of fans from both sides, a wide selection of drinks and excellent food. It’s certainly the best bar we have been in when visiting Wolves although as Varsity and the dire Scream bar over the road are its only competition that isn’t hard. Young Clive had a homemade burger that was very good and I pickled myself very quickly in Italian lager ready for the ensuing massacre between 3pm and 5pm. In the end it wasn’t as bad as I’d expected - the match or the pub.

6/10


Police and Stewards

No real sign of either to be honest. With 2000 Wolves fans standing to the left of the away end the stewards sensibly decided to allow 200 QPR fans at the back to do likewise. Other than that the main focus of attention seemed to be on preventing a pitch invasion - both over the public address system and by ringing the pitch with officials. I was forced to wonder why? I mean every club that achieves something has a pitch invasion, the fans love it, the pictures are screened across the news networks and it’s expected. So why is there this whole stigma and threat of fines and the like for doing it? It’s not like a protest invasion or one by people wanting to cause trouble - it’s completely harmless. Let’s not be so stuffy about it all.

6/10

Total - 47/80

Photo: Action Images

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