In what’s becoming a typical week for QPR fans this season, glory on the pitch and anger off it, we look at the rise and rise of Stewpeas and the ticket prices plus the timeless tale of the morbidly obese man and the deckchairs at Hartlepool.

Just how good is Damion Stewart?
Firstly I know Damion is a very religious man so I hope he’s not offended in any way by our headline this week, it is of course meant in jest.

The most natural defender I’ve seen playing for QPR in my time as a supporter was Danny Maddix. Although we sadly dipped out of the top flight just as it was really coming into a boom period we were there for the start of the influx of foreign stars – people like Ruud Gullit, Juninho, Klinsman and Cantona all graced the Loftus Road pitch before our demotion. Only once, against Les Ferdinand on his return with Newcastle, can I ever remember Maddix being detailed to man mark any of these people and not doing a superb job. Klinsman especially had no answer to Maddix’s style of play and he was grossly under rated by everybody except Northern the Elder who still, I believe, keeps a picture of Danny on his bedside table. A story for another day perhaps.

Maddix though was of course prone to moments that would have you tearing your hair out. Several times I can recall him bringing the ball out of defence with time to spare and little pressure to deal with before hooking it inexplicably into the Ellerslie Road Stand about half way up. Maddix was a superb player as long as he didn’t actually have to think about what he was doing.

I bring Maddix up because in Damion Stewart we have a player very similar in my eyes. If you could write down everything you wanted your centre half to be Damion would tick every box. For me a good central defender should be good in the air, quick across the ground, strong and hard. Stewart is certainly all of these, his header at Aston Villa on Wednesday night nearly ripped the net off the back of the posts, he’s probably the quickest over 100 metres in the entire squad (what do they feed these Jamaicans?), he played at Norwich last week with concussion and the way he fought, and won, against John Carew at Villa Park was something to behold.

Like Maddix and his moments of inexplicable brain explosion Stewart is, however, accident prone. Or at least he was. Cast your mind back to the summer (yes we did have one) and the team for the first half of the Stevenage friendly. Stewart was in that along with people like Bolder, Rehman and others. “God I hope we’re not going to be relying on this lot again” was a typical comment about the team and when they were all replaced at half time at Broadhall Way the performance of the team improved considerably. I’ve always quite liked Stewart because he has the roar ability to be a super centre half but it seemed that his frequent spells of day dreaming resulting in goals against had made him just too much of a liability and he was about to be on his way.

I’ve spoken to a couple of people who have played with Damion in the past and they both said the same thing – potentially the best centre half in the league but if you stop talking to him or take your eyes off him for a second you’ve had it because his mind will wander and he’ll lose his man. That’s why Danny Cullip was so good for him, he operated him like a remote control robot.

This season though something has changed. The strengths are still there, he’s still winning everything in the air, he’s still lightening fast, he’s still strong and awkward, but the weaknesses are conspicuous by their absence. One goal at Bristol City, possibly, could be put down to him going to sleep in the time honoured fashion but at Norwich last week and Villa again last night when total concentration was required for a full 90 minutes he was colossal.

You may have gathered from the various articles I wrote before and after the Villa game that I’m a massive fan of John Carew, he’s the complete target man in my opinion, but despite giving up an advantage in height, experience and weight Stewart mucked in and outplayed the big Norwegian at Villa Park. There was an incident in the first half where Carew collected the ball wide on the right with his back to goal and Stewart behind him. Carew took the ball and Stewart all the way down the byline waiting for his power and ability to overcome the defender but Stewart calmly stuck to his task and cleaned him out when the chance presented itself.

I’m wary of praising him too much because I wrote in this column a few weeks ago about how important Gavin Mahon is to us and since then he hasn’t played half as well as he was before although he still does a vital job for us in my opinion. However it’s hard not to go overboard about our Big Jamaican centre half at the moment – he started the season as the name at the top of the ‘for the chop’ list and now he’s the first name on the team sheet. The fact that he keeps popping up with goals from set pieces is merely an added bonus.

It seems that Iain Dowie is the man to unlock all that potential we knew he had, harnessing the raw ability with a better mental approach to the game. I’ve been holding off writing this for a few weeks believing that as soon as I do he’ll drop a complete clanger and I hope I haven’t jinxed him ahead of the two home games this week but at the moment he is playing fantastically well and the confidence he’s getting from it will only improve him further.

An early candidate for Player of the Season perhaps.

United we stand
Well I nearly fell off my seat when I heard that the Football League had told us we couldn’t raise our prices for away fans mid season. The Football League siding with the common fan and standing up against the outrageous pricing of football matches? Whatever next? I haven’t been so gob smacked since I heard QPR were introducing this rip off in the first place.

Credit where it’s due to the league, and to Derby County who took one look at the scandalous prices QPR wanted to charge their fans, stifled a laugh and then sent them straight back. I can well imagine plenty of clubs, ours included, would have mumbled a bit and sold them for £40 without asking any questions. Derby have done exactly the right thing by their fans, who will still pay prices a little on the expensive side this coming Saturday and if I was a Rams fan I’d be absolutely delighted with the way my club has stood up for me this week.

If only I could say the same of the club I do support. QPR never seem to be more than 20 minutes away from another idea designed to shaft me and you. Be it a ticket price rise, a £3.50 booking fee or making me pay to have my season ticket posted to me after shelling out £600 to buy it in the first place one thing QPR are not doing at the moment is any favours for the people that turn up to support them week after week and have done through thick and extremely thin times.

Amit Bhatia’s heartfelt thanks to the fans at Villa Park published on the club’s official website on Thursday was a lovely touch and much appreciated but it had a hollow ring to it coming as it did just two days after the same website had announced that, because of Derby’s objections and the league decision, ticket prices in the Loft would be returned to their previous level. News that was broken to us by way of a paragraph at the end of a story about how all the most expensive tickets for the Derby game had sold out. Those would be the platinum tickets we were told were sold out in the summer would they? A story published on the same website that said the club had experienced unprecedented demand for tickets to the Barnsley game (attendance 14,964)? How bloody stupid do they think we are?

The problem is, what are we going to do about it? I grew up among QPR fans, a tiny little mop haired dot among all these big blokes at football matches. It was the best time of my life. Back in those days QPR fans protested at the drop of a hat – mergers with Fulham and Wimbledon were fought off, a chairman was ousted after selling our best players, a blonde lady ran on the pitch and removed her shirt (but not her bra). The story goes that a week later at Sheffield Wednesday my Grandad told her we were all very proud but somewhat disappointed. Dirty old man.

Now the fan base seems to be fractured. There are that many groups and personalities that think they should have a say it really has become like the Life of Brian and the Judean People’s Front, or is that the People’s Front of Judea? In time I’d like to think that all these splinter groups and websites can come back under the banner of either the LSA or QPR 1st so when things like this happen in future we can speak with one voice.

The initial season ticket price rises were announced after the last match, presumably so we didn’t all kick up a fuss at Flavio’s big party before the West Brom match. In the end those increases, necessary to some extent but scandalously over cooked, went through and we quietly accepted them. Now just three home league games in we’re forced to swallow another increase and it seems we’re going to say nothing again.

A silent protest was mooted, excuse the pun, for the first ten minutes this weekend. Some said this wouldn’t work, some wanted to know how this decision had been reached, others said it would detrimentally affect the team (do me a favour), and others said we shouldn’t offend our owners in case they pack up and leave us in the lurch. Purlease. Nobody is more grateful than me for what our board has done for this club – the team is excellent, the ground looks better although I do miss my members bar, the sponsorship deals are superb, we’re on the up and it’s absolutely bloody awesome after years of decline. But to raise prices in the summer by so much after telling us specifically they would be going up by “10 per cent or something normal” and then raise them again after three games to £40 for Championship football, again out of the blue with no consultation, and to insult us with spin on the official website. Well I’m sorry but something needs to be said about that.

The fact that we’ve won at Norwich and Aston Villa since the raises were announced, exhilarating though it was, makes not one bit of difference. We don’t want the board to leave but we need to show them somehow that we’re much more than “somebody who turns up once a week and pays £20” as Flavio Briatore has previously suggested. We deserve to be treated better than we have been over the past fortnight and the club needs to understand that we will not stand for things like this. Sadly, reading round the other message boards, it seems that apathy and some deluded sense of self importance about just how crucial it is that 300 people sing “you Northern scum” in the first ten minutes of the Derby match means that the silence protest is doomed to failure.

Fine. If a silence isn’t the way to go then I can accept that. Personally I’d go with banners and a few well targeted chants. However if a silence is the preferred method then as many people as possible should take part. The worst thing we can do this Saturday is do nothing, roll over and accept what has been handed to us. What is to stop this happening again if we do? What is to stop prices for say the last home game of the season being hiked to £60 or £70 each if it turns out to be a promotion decider? Grateful yes, but door mats no. This raise must not go unopposed and with the ITV cameras at Loftus Road this Saturday we have a terrific chance to make a point. A decade ago we wouldn’t have thought twice about it.

Top five cringeworthy moments on the road with QPR
The sight of a clearly disturbed gentleman belting out a hideous song about John Carew at Villa Park on Wednesday sparked a debate in our part of the away end about worse things we’ve been hit with during the break at away games. Admittedly it was hard to think of anything worse, as the song droned on and the cat calls from the QPR fans got louder – the guy was up on the big screen living my worst nightmare and seemed to be quite enjoying it. To the tune of The Wanderer…
He’s the kind of guy that’s Villa through and through
His name is John Carew
He's Bigger Than Me or You
He's Gonna Score More Than Two
John Carew Carew

Oh My God it’s too hideous, I can feel the blood dribbling out of my right ear again so I’ll just post the YouTube link and be done with it.

You may find it hard to believe there has been anything worse than that but you’d be wrong. How about that spikey haired bloke in the suit at Coventry on Saturday screaming down the microphone “Good afternoon to everybody IN THE TESCO STAND!!!!!!” only to be met with complete silence? Any sane person would have taken that as a cue to bloody well piss off but no he carried on to the “COVENTRY EVENING TELEGRAPH STAND” and when he then came across to the press benches and asked them to cheer his mental deficiency well it was time for me to dip below decks for another warm bottle of Carling.

That’s an idea stolen from Hull City where that needlessly loud fat bloke shouts “good afternoon South Stand” and all the chavs get up and scream a bit. It’s a practice I find highly embarrassing and one I refuse to join in with when I attend rugby league matches in that part of the world. Still it’s tame in the lameness stakes compared to City’s “Tigers, Tigers burning bright” run out remix music interspersed with previously mentioned fat bloke slobbering “COME ON” down the microphone. Frightening stuff. He could do with a spell in a padded room.

As could the, and I try not to swear often on this website, twat with the microphone at Elland Road. He makes no secret of the fact that it is quiet at Leeds home games these days – actually pleading over the tannoy for the home fans to “make some noise, come on sing, sing. SING!” In a part of the world not famed for the tolerance of its football fans I’m surprised and disappointed that nobody has beaten the loud mouthed, pimple faced prat to a bloody pulp in the car park. Sing indeed. You bloody sing if you want to, I’ll sit here and eat my pie.

I’ve always quite enjoyed round the pole at QPR, although the idea seemed to die a death a little bit when they stopped the practice of picking morbidly obese people who had been in the pub all afternoon to take part. Sprightly 12 year olds that don’t drink and don’t get dizzy just aren’t as fun as 30 stone middle aged men who have to stop halfway round to “have a minute” and often chunder on the edge of the 18 yard box as they run up to take the crucial spot kick. I always thought they could have spiced things up further by introducing a real Pole for them to run round, I’m sure a local plumbing firm had one spare on a Saturday afternoon, but sadly when I pitched the idea to the club they asked me to go away, and charged my a £3.50 “handling fee” for the idea.

Where is all this going you may ask – well those that were at Victoria Park that fateful day will already have seen the warning signs. That’s right, I am in fact merely building up to telling the fat man with deck chairs story again.

To set the scene QPR were fighting for promotion from League One and faced a tough fixture at Hartlepool United on a bracing March Saturday. Bristol City were breathing down our necks and a win was important to maintain second place. Chris Day and the physio spent the previous day trying to lance a growth on his leg themselves with predictably disastrous consequences and young Derby keeper Lee Camp was drafted in on loan at the last minute for the game. It was 0-0 at half time and people were a little tense.

As the players trooped off at half time two youth teamers appeared on the pitch holding deck chairs and duly positioned them between the halfway line and the 18 yard box. Fans were paying little attention at this point. The man with the microphone disappeared off into the home end to find a “willing volunteer” and Hartlepool’s excellent monkey mascot Hang’us took up a position as goalkeeper in front of the QPR fans. After a few minutes a volunteer was found and he lumbered over the advertising hoardings and onto the pitch. Now you know that bloke in America that ate so much crap from McDonalds that they had to demolish part of his house and bring him out on a fork lift truck when it was time for him to go to the hospital? This guy was bigger than that.

He waddled up to the centre spot where a ball had been placed and was informed that he now had the seemingly simple task of dribbling the ball around the two deck chairs and taking a shot at the man in the giant monkey costume. The deck chairs were spaced quite widely apart and were, as you would expect of deck chairs, very much stationary. He had the whole half of the pitch to work with so this was hardly likely to be a problem for most people and still at this point the vast majority of people in the ground were still reading their programmes or eating their pies unaware of the feast of live entertainment about to take place before their very eyes. The giant figure of a man set off at a steady pace with the ball at his feet – circuses across the globe have spent years looking for an act this good.

Sadly for the competitor, amusingly for the rest of us, it seems his weight is a result of chronic laziness and rather than dribble a safe distance around the first chair he tried to cut it too fine, getting the ball caught underneath momentarily and then knocking the chair over with his gut as he attempted to free it. After a couple of jabs the ball spurted out and jamed itself very firmly under the second chair. Refusing to be beaten our gladiator actually picked up speed as he approached the problem and, upon arrival, aimed a giant swinging leg at the ball presumably intending to pop it right out the other side at the first time of asking.

Again sadly for him and amusingly for the rest of us the ball stubbornly refused to move, his leg became entangled with the canvas and he was propelled forwards with the momentum of his kick, bashing his head on the top stanchion of the chair on his way to the turf at which point the wooden structure flipped up from underneath him and crashed down on his back leaving an ugly, but nonetheless hysterically funny, pile of fat man, wooden chair and mischievous football.

Sadly as we’ve never played Hartlepool before or since it’s not clear whether or not that’s a regular event at Victoria Park. Still, that’s entertainment.

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