QPR’S FA Cup hoodoo
18 years, two wins, minimal joy
QPR’S FA Cup record is dismal. In the 22 years prior to January’s Third Round clash with Leeds United, the ‘Super’ Hoops hadn’t won a single tie without the aid of a replay. In fact, the last time they did, Trevor Sinclair scored that goal. FFT watches to see if the magic can return to this part of west London
Trevor Sinclair stood outside the penalty area at Loftus Road with his back to goal. The cross from the right wing was looping and wayward. He had only one option: an overhead kick. As his shot flew goalward, the crowd were already roaring, amazed that he had even attempted such an audacious effort. A split second later, they were roaring with pure joy. They had just witnessed one of the all-time great FA Cup goals. “You can keep Pele in Escape To Victory,” beams QPR fan Barry Strong, smiling as the memories come flooding back. “It took Pele 10 takes – Trevor Sinclair did it in one.”
That was in 1997. And QPR supporters didn’t know it then, but this moment of ecstasy would be followed by 22 years of FA Cup misery. As they mingle outside Loftus Road for today’s cup clash with Leeds, that Sinclair-driven victory over Barnsley is still the last time that QPR won an FA Cup tie without the need for a replay, even though it was so long ago that Barnsley hadn’t yet reached the Premier League and Tony Blair hadn’t yet become Prime Minister.
The past 18 years have brought two FA Cup wins of any description. Queens Park Rangers now hold the record for the most Third Round defeats. Despite being the closest Football League club to Wembley, they’ve never felt so far away from the FA Cup final.
“We walked to Wembley for the 2014 play-off final – it only took us an hour or so,” laughs Strong. “But we’ve lost every FA Cup tie for the past 50 years. At least, that’s what it feels like.”
It’s a grey Sunday in west London and a gloom hangs in the air as QPR fans start to arrive on FA Cup Third Round day, their least favourite day of the year. The 2pm kick-off is still some time away, so Fourfourtwo heads to meet some supporters at a nearby pub, The Crown & Sceptre. Among them is Clive Whittingham from fans’ website Loft For Words. He’s not confident about a meeting with Championship leaders Leeds.
“Well, we’ll get beat, won’t we?” he says, with resignation in his voice. Now in his mid-30s, he had only just started secondary school when the FA Cup last gave him any vague moment of happiness.
“I was 12 or 13 when Trevor Sinclair scored his overhead kick,” says Whittingham. “My dad took me to every match from Grimsby, where we lived. All the way back home on the train, I was saying, ‘Dad, that was a serious goal.’ He was a bit worse for wear and said, ‘It was all right, but you’re over-egging it.’ Then we sat down to watch Match of the Day and he said, ‘OK, fair enough…’
“I’ve watched that goal so many times since. Loads of Barnsley fans clapped, but there’s one bloke in a white coat slagging off the keeper, even though he wouldn’t have got near it with a f**king butterfly net!”
Sat across the table, pint in hand, Mel Huckridge remembers an even happier time – when the Hoops actually reached the FA Cup final, only
losing to Tottenham after a replay back in 1982. “I thought our name was on it,” he admits. “Even though we were in the Second Division, in all my time growing up QPR were a decent team. I was only 18, so expected things like that to keep happening.” It never has done.
Since 1997, the Fourth Round is as far as they have got. Even a three-year spell in the third tier didn’t produce any more FA Cup victories – they went out in the First Round every time. “Swansea away was a particularly bad one, just before they left the Vetch Field,” Whittingham remembers of those days. “They were a league below us and still beat us 4-0.”
A year later came a tie with Vauxhall Motors of the Northern Premier Division. Ian Holloway’s men were held to a 0-0 draw in the North West before losing the replay on penalties after a 1-1 draw, to boos from a home crowd of 5,336. Paul Furlong and Karl Connolly missed from the spot. “We lost to a factory team,” laments Whittingham. “I drove home afterwards in my Vauxhall Corsa, just staring at the Vauxhall badge.”
The result surprised even Sky Sports, who’d selected QPR’S expected Second Round tie at fourth-tier Macclesfield for live screening. Instead, they got Macclesfield Town vs Vauxhall Motors. “The television people thought we’d get through,” laughs Huckridge. “How stupid were they?”
Vauxhall Motors are the standout name in the long list of teams who have ousted QPR since 1997 – a list that also includes Grimsby, Luton, Huddersfield, Wimbledon, MK Dons (twice), Nottingham Forest (twice), Sheffield United (twice) and Blackburn (three times). Taking replays out of the equation, they haven’t even led a Third Round match since a 2010 fixture at Bramall Lane, when they were pegged back to 1-1 within 10 minutes and duly lost the replay.
A full decade without an FA Cup win ended in 2012 when they beat MK Dons in a replay, but even their last win in the competition, against West Bromwich Albion in 2013, was bittersweet.
“We scored a last-minute equaliser at home thanks to Kieron Dyer and his walking stick – I’ve seen that band at Knebworth, by the way,” quips Huckridge. With supporters’ enthusiasm for the FA Cup sapped by 16 years of pain, Whittingham wasn’t exactly delighted when Dyer levelled. “You have never seen a goal celebrated less than us earning a replay at West Brom,” he says. “Everyone thought, ‘Thanks for that, Kieron’. There couldn’t have been more than 50 of us at the replay.” Huckridge wasn’t one of them – “I’d have those people certified.” “I was there,” responds Whittingham. “It was cold.” Huckridge continues: “We won, and then the next round was a very winnable home game against MK Dons and we put out a reserve side.” He sighs, remembering how the visitors, two divisions lower, raced into a four-goal lead. Harry Redknapp’s men lost 4-2. “We were relegated from the Premier League that year,” explains Huckridge, “but so were Wigan, who won the cup – I’d have sold 10 years of my life for that.”
Team selection is a common theme in QPR’S FA Cup woes. “I’d take QPR in an FA Cup final over QPR being in the Premier League,” admits Whittingham. “You get up into the Premier League, you try to win 10 games to stay up, and it’s £54 to get in. If you get to the FA Cup final, you might be in the Europa League, and we’d love that. But we went through a period of picking a nonsense team in the FA Cup every year. Then, last year, we picked our strongest team and I thought, ‘We’re taking it seriously’. And we still lost, to MK Dons again. We’re cursed.”
Not that QPR’S knockout nightmares are restricted to the FA Cup – they have quite the history. Their two UEFA Cup quests witnessed QPR lose on penalties to AEK Athens in 1977, despite having won the first leg 3-0, then thump Partizan 6-2 at home in 1984 only to lose 4-0 in Belgrade and bow out on away goals. This century, their brief sojourn into the Football League Trophy resulted in two first-round exits and a 4-0 thrashing away at Southend. And they’ve reached the fourth round of the League Cup only once since 1995. “We were annoyed this season because we got through two rounds and then drew Blackpool away,” explains Whittingham. “It was an opportunity to go quite deep into the competition, but Steve Mcclaren made a lot of changes to the team and we lost. He got a load of abuse for that from the away end, and at a fans’ forum a couple of months later. I think he was surprised by how annoyed people were.”
It’s made QPR fans question whether to attend cup games. Last year’s FA Cup Third Round loss was watched by only 6,314 supporters. “They’re testing your loyalty,” says Huckridge, who tackled that exact subject in his book, Grounds For Divorce. “You say, ‘Why am I going?’”
QPR do have a cup ticket scheme: fans who sign up automatically buy a ticket for any home cup tie that season. Given their disastrous knockouts record, does anyone actually bother? “I do, but I’m nuts,” admits Whittingham. “Look, if QPR are playing, I’m there, so I may as well. When you sign up, you know there’ll be no money taken from your account, because there’ll be no cup ties. They will take £10 in August and £10 in January, and that’s the end of that.”
Incredibly, Nick Guoth has flown 10,500 miles to be at this match – the Qpr-supporting Australian arrived from Sydney earlier in the week.
“It’s the magic of the FA Cup!” he jokes. “I’ve got a season ticket and I come over a few times a year.
“I was here for last year’s FA Cup mess, too.”
QPR’S league form ahead of this fixture has been unexpectedly good. After a nightmare start to life under Mcclaren – they lost their opening four games, including a 7-1 reverse at West Brom – they’ve recovered and go into this game sitting as high as 9th in the Championship.
But Leeds are top of the table and clear favourites here. The visiting fans’ enthusiasm is high; club anthem Marching On Together blares out of a car as a group of supporters park up near the ground.
They attribute their fine campaign to one man: Marcelo Bielsa, who takes charge of his first FA Cup match this afternoon. “He’s a god; he’s the messiah,” Leeds supporter Dom Fletcher tells FFT. “At first I was thinking, ‘Who?’ Then I found out that [Mauricio] Pochettino and [Pep] Guardiola were saying that he’s the best coach in the world. We have the same players as last season, but now they’re world-beaters.”
A Leeds icon concurs, as we head into the ground and grab a quick word with title-winner Eddie Gray. “Bielsa has done a great job,” says the one-club man. “The whole club has been lifted by him.”
Phil Hay, Leeds United reporter for the Yorkshire Evening Post, reveals that Bielsa’s fitness regime has played a key part in the team’s rapid progress. “He told players to lose weight in order to become fitter, to allow them to cope with the physical demands of the game he wanted to play,” says Hay. “He weighs the players regularly. They signed Jamal Blackman on loan from Chelsea with the intention of him being their No.1 keeper, but he was 18 pounds over the weight Bielsa wanted him to be – not through any fault of his own, just because Bielsa wanted a certain physique. Before his injury [in mid-november], Blackman had never started a league game.
“The players spend a lot more time at the training ground. For triple sessions during the summer, many of them stayed at a hotel because it wasn’t worth driving home, only to come back really early the next morning. They had one day off in August – only Bielsa could do that. Players would take umbrage if an unproven manager did it, but there isn’t anyone at Leeds who is going to cross Bielsa.
“Dealing with him has been fascinating. You can forget contacting him directly or off-the-record briefings – that’s just not how he works.
FOUR OF QPR’S XI WEREN’T BORN WHEN SINCLAIR’S BICYCLE KICK GAVE THEM THEIR LAST REPLAY-LESS FA CUP WIN
But he will answer everything put to him at press conferences, and in the most incredible detail – answers that go on for about 10 minutes. His first press conference lasted 80 minutes. He’s a really interesting and thoughtful guy.”
Former QPR defender Paul Parker is on duty today for the BBC. “It’s difficult to come here and be objective,” he reveals, smiling, such is his affection for the club he represented more than 150 times between 1987 and 1991, earning him a place in the England team at Italia 90.
“When I was at QPR we once played Liverpool in the quarter-finals, but since then they’ve not been great in the FA Cup. When managers rest players for cup matches, I wonder if they want to be rested. I was fortunate to play in the 1994 FA Cup Final for Manchester United and that meant a lot to me – it would to any player.
“But QPR have gone to Nottingham Forest this season and won for the first time ever, so maybe they can get past this Third Round, too.”
Indeed, Mcclaren’s outfit overcame an even more historic hoodoo earlier this term: they had never won at the City Ground in their entire history, failing 34 times before a 1-0 league victory in December.
QPR have made five changes today. One player to retain his place is defender Darnell Furlong, who was seven years old when his dad, Paul, missed a penalty against Vauxhall Motors in 2002. Four of the starting line-up here weren’t even born when Sinclair scored his famous bicycle kick and QPR last won an FA Cup tie without needing a replay.
“They want to progress in the FA Cup, but you can see that there’s rotation,” explains Football. london’s QPR reporter, Phil Spencer. “If they win, it’s a bonus.”
Far from trying to steal an advantage on pre-match information about their opponents, as he’d do against Derby a week later, Bielsa publicly announced his team for this match two days early. His six changes possibly indicate where the game lies in his priorities: promotion to the Premier League is the focus.
Despite that, more than 3,000 Leeds fans have filled both tiers of the away end this afternoon. They’re dominating the atmosphere before kick-off, though an encouraging number of R’s diehards have made an appearance. Some had suggested they would be outnumbered by visiting fans, but that isn’t the case – with ticket prices significantly reduced, there’s an 11,637 attendance inside the 18,000-capacity stadium.
QPR’S cup curse almost strikes in record time. Inside 30 seconds, Tyler Roberts’ 25-yard snapshot rebounds off one post, runs across the line and hits the other upright. The Hoops’ hopes are in jeopardy before some fans have taken their seats.
Confident Leeds supporters twirl scarves, but the locals are roused when the lively Aramide Oteh has an effort saved as Mcclaren’s men begin to threaten. Then, 23 minutes in, the unthinkable happens: QPR take the lead in an FA Cup game. Jake Bidwell is felled in the area and Oteh dispatches the penalty. The delighted home support sing along as Papa’s Got A Brand New Pigbag plays over the Loftus Road speakers.
But they’re not given long to dream of Wembley. Two minutes later Leeds win a free-kick 35 yards out, Lewis Baker hits it goalwards and there’s an audible groan from the home faithful as goalkeeper Matt Ingram spills the ball straight into the path of Finnish defender Aapo Halme. Tap-in, 1-1. “What a bloody foul-up!” one supporter despairs, before apologising to a nearby mother and child for his bad language.
QPR have to survive a goalmouth scramble as the Whites push for a second, before their keeper suffers another nervous moment when Roberts charges down his clearance. “F**king hell, Ingram!” yells a fan as the frustration starts to grow.
“Does it go straight to a replay if it’s a draw, or is there extra time?” another local asks. His pal replies, “It had f**king better not be a replay at Leeds – I’d rather lose.”
QPR look dangerous going forward, though, and there’s applause at half-time. It’s turning out to be an entertaining cup tie. The cut and thrust continues after the interval, although one home fan seizes the chance for some inventive heckling during a lull in play. “Oi, mate!” he shouts, getting the attention of 18-year-old Leeds forward Jack Clarke by the touchline while everyone waits for a free-kick to be whipped in. “You’ve all got the same haircut! Is it a job lot the whole team’s got?” Unsure how to take this bizarre put-down, Clarke grins back, gives him a thumbs-up and runs off to deal with more important matters.
Bielsa sits anxiously on his trademark bucket, occasionally rising to stand solemnly with hands behind back, before impatience prompts some frustrated gesticulation and a cry of “Vamos!”
The hosts almost go back in front when Jordan Cousins forces Bailey Peacock-farrell to make a spectacular save, tipping his piledriver onto a post. Then, with 15 minutes left comes the moment home fans have been waiting for: Luke Freeman curls in a corner and Bidwell nods the ball into the net. Is it an end to 22 years of misery at last?
“Come on, we’ve waited so long,” pleads an anxious supporter as the minutes slowly tick down. In the top tier of the main stand, a man wearing a sombrero is whirling an old-school rattle, seemingly sensing victory. It’s almost game over when Freeman’s free-kick hits the inside of a post. “Oh, for crying out loud!” shouts an exasperated fan.
Some Hoops tempt fate by pondering the Fourth Round. “A London club away would be good – are Charlton still in it?” one asks. They aren’t. There’s a brief break from the stress when the referee falls over – even the Leeds fans laugh – and not long after that the final whistle is met by huge cheers from the home supporters. QPR’S feline mascot races onto the pitch, waving a giant flag to celebrate a 2-1 victory. The wait is over. The R’s have won an FA Cup tie without a replay. The sense of occasion is only slightly diluted by the PA system playing I Gotta Feeling by the Black Eyed Peas.
“We’re going all the way now – see you at Wembley!” smiles Barry Strong, who had been so pessimistic before kick-off. “I’m just amazed that there’s another round to play after this – I haven’t seen that for a long time. I thought we were getting the cup today!”
At the post-match press conference, Mcclaren tells FFT, “It’s great to give the fans a good Sunday night. We’ve created history in the last few weeks, winning at Nottingham Forest for the first time and now reaching the Fourth Round. It was a fantastic performance. The importance of the cups has been drummed into me since my first year in management under Steve Gibson.” Mcclaren guided Middlesbrough to their first ever triumph in a major cup competition, the League Cup in 2004 – maybe he was always going to be the man to banish QPR’S FA Cup hoodoo.
There’s no obvious emotion on Bielsa’s face as he arrives to dissect the match for 21 minutes, rarely making eye contact but staring at the desk, thinking through his answers. “We deserved to lose,” he admits via his interpreter, Salim Lamrani, before giving a four-minute answer about why QPR scored from a set-piece, going through his defenders and assessing their heading ability individually. “I’m not satisfied with the explanation I gave you, to tell the truth,” concedes the Argentine. It wasn’t lacking in thoroughness.
FFT heads back to The Crown & Sceptre to find a group of QPR fans who don’t know exactly how to react to an FA Cup win.
“This is unprecedented,” beams Clive Whittingham – and for a man who rarely misses a QPR match, there’s a problem. “I’m away for the Fourth Round. I’m in New Orleans on a work trip. There’s an event I go to at the end of January every year, so I’m always away that weekend. It’s never mattered before, because QPR always have a free week.
“I don’t remember experiencing a Fourth Round draw – I don’t even know when it is. And because I can’t go, it will be something good. I’m the unluckiest person in the world, so it’ll be Spurs or Chelsea.”
“We’ll beat Chelsea!” jests pal Julian Jest, infused with a new-found confidence in QPR’S cup prospects. “Stop putting tequila in that drink,” replies Whittingham. “We’ll either get a big game like that, or we’ll get Blackburn again, as that’s who we draw all the f**king time. Please tell me MK Dons are already out?” They are.
Owain Harvey is coming up with new ways in which the FA Cup could curse QPR, even after a long-awaited win. “One of our key players will get a double leg break or something in the Fourth Round,” he predicts.
“I’m surprised,” adds Whittingham. “I thought it would be a replay, then we’d have to go all the way to Elland Road in midweek, and lose. But we’re on our way to Wembley now, clearly.”
Or Fratton Park. When the Fourth Round draw is made a day later, QPR don’t get Blackburn, nor Tottenham, nor Chelsea. Instead, they’re off to League One high-fliers – and 2008 FA Cup winners – Portsmouth. Hardly a glamour tie, but it will have to do.
Just reaching the Fourth Round, just winning one FA Cup match, was enough to shock the supporters of Queens Park Rangers. Now that 22 years of frustration is over, who knows what lies ahead? As long as it doesn’t involve Blackburn or MK Dons, they’ll be happy.
“I’LL BE On A WORK TRIP. I’M ALWAYS AWAY On FOURTH ROUND WEEKEND. IT’S NEVER MATTERED BEFORE”