Our visit to Queens Park Rangers is yet another game to be shown live on Sky with a 12.15 kick-off. We’re not famous any more!
To get to Loftus Road by car you need to leave the M25 at junction 16 and take the M40 towards London, which becomes the A40 after a mile or so. At the point where the A40 becomes the A40(M) (and becomes seriously congested), turn off onto the A40 towards White City/Shepherds Bush and turn right into Wood Lane, turn right into South Africa Road for the ground.
There is only street parking available, and it's very limited close to the ground. Some streets are cordoned off and others for residents only, with regulations strictly enforced. There is some parking to the north of the A40 flyover, but in this area you need to keep valuables out of sight at all times even before you park, as it has been known for thieves to break the windows of cars waiting at traffic lights!
It might be a better idea to leave the A40 several miles before you get to Loftus Road and park at one of the nearby Central Line stations, such as Northolt or Greenford, taking the tube direct to White City. This is the nearest tube station, being only 5 minutes walk from the stadium, but for those travelling from Central London another option is Shepherds' Bush Market station on the Hammersmith and City line, which has a better choice of pubs and takeaways nearby.
There are no longer any pubs for away fans next to the ground, as 'The Springbok' no longer admits visitors, so you will need to head to the Shepherds’ Bush Green area. A good pub for away fans is ‘O’Neill’s’, which you will find by turning left outside Shepherds' Bush Market station, and then right when you get to the Green and following this road to the next corner. Another option is to go to the Wetherspoons which is upstairs in a retail complex called Vue , which you will find o the other side of the green, next to the Central Line tube station
The only takeaway close to the ground is the 'First Choice' next to the Springbok pub, so once again the area round Shepherds' Bush Market station comes out on top, with a wide variety of scoff along Uxbridge Road and around Shepherd's Bush Green. The ethnic diversity of the area means that as well as the usual range of cafes, burger bars, fried chicken outlets and chippies, there are Indian, Chinese & Thai outlets.
They normally sell alcohol inside the away end, but it remains to be seen whether they will do so when Leeds are the visitors. And the food inside Loftus Road is quite good by football ground standards, but it's also a bit expensive, for example £2.90 for a ‘Cheese and Onion slice’.
The Capacity of Loftus Road is 18,360 and away fans get the upper tier of the School End, which holds around 1,800. The entrance is in Ellersie Road, as there are no turnstiles behind this stand because it backs right onto the school grounds. There is normally quite a large police and steward presence, and you should expect to be thoroughly searched before you enter the away end, while they are also very slow operating the turnstiles, so you should arrive at least half an hour before kick off.
The adult price for away tickets in the centre is £30, with concessions paying £20 and under 16s £15, though there are some discounts for restricted view seats and seats towards the corners. The Leeds allocation was sold through the ‘attendance tracker’ Loyalty scheme, and there were only 100 remaining last week, which presumably will have been sold by now.
And QPR are only selling tickets for the home stands to fans who were already be registered on their database by the 26th January 2014, but even so their website is showing all areas as either sold out or with limited availability. o there should be quite a decent crowd, and if you haven’t already got yourself sorted with a ticket then you’re not going to get one.
The stadium is hemmed in by it's surroundings on all sides, which is the main reason why it hasn't been possible to develop Loftus Road. For this reason it's very compact inside and the legroom is limited where seats have been bolted onto the former terracing, which would bother us if we ever sat down at away games.
For some time QPR have been hoping to move to a new larger stadium but the problem has been finding a large enough plot of land in West London. There has been recent press speculation that they might have something to announce quite soon, but nothing has come of it yet.
Some of this rubbish came from www.footballgroundguide.com.