Fear of irrelevance can take Queen’s to the top
THE catalyst for the rebirth of Scotland’s oldest football club was the most powerful human emotion of all. Fear. Irrelevance, said American Christian evangelist Rick Warren, is ‘when the speed of change outside an organisation is greater than the speed of change inside.’ And irrelevance was what Queen’s Park feared most.
A historical artefact for most of the last century, the Spiders won their tenth — and final — Scottish Cup in 1893.
That was the year Scottish teams embraced professionalism. All, that is, bar one.
The club’s Latin motto is ‘Ludere causa Ludendi’ and means ‘to play for the sake of playing’.
It’s a noble ideal. But in modern football it quickly became hopelessly anachronistic and outdated. Much like the club itself.
In the 20th century, Queen’s Park acquired the status of a quaint and eccentric antique. An amateur club in a professional game, Celtic and Rangers left them trailing in their wake. They rattled around their rickety old Hampden home like a pensioner refusing to downsize. They were a curiosity.
Now, as 2023 finds its feet, the old team in Mount Florida have undergone a facelift. They’re unrecognisable.
The last three years have brought back-to-back promotions from League Two and League One. They currently sit top of the Championship, four points clear of Ayr United, after six league wins on the bounce. And they owe all this to the fretting of a former president.
The football career of Gerry Crawley was nothing to write home about. Released by Celtic at the age of 18, he was playing Junior football for St Roch’s when Queen’s Park manager Eddie Hunter spotted him turning out against Pollok. Like Andrew Robertson many years later, the Spiders offered him a second chance.
By the age of 56, Crawley was vice-president of a digital communications firm. And, in 2018, he saw an opportunity to repay the debt.
Berwick Rangers had dropped into the Lowland League, losing their place in the senior ranks. Brechin City and Cowdenbeath would follow suit soon enough. Languishing seventh in League Two, Scottish football’s fourth tier, Queen’s Park were a sitting duck. Crawley saw the trap door beckon, with no way back.
The sale of Hampden to the SFA for £5m prompted a period of soul-searching. A chance to take stock.
With cash in the bank, Queen’s Park could ask themselves if they really wanted to carry on making up the numbers in Scottish football or reinvent themselves as a modern, progressive football club.
Within a year, the committee convened an EGM and ended 152 years of amateurism. When the pandemic came, other clubs started cutting costs and pulling down the shutters. Propped up by the patronage of Lord Willie Haughey, Queen’s Park went the other way. They turned full-time and started throwing a few quid around.
Former Dundee United and Hibs striker Simon Murray has justified the investment with 18 goals in 26 games in the Championship. Malachi Boateng was brought in on loan from Crystal Palace. Josh McPake and Dom Thomas are Premiership players in all but name.
Chief executive Leeann Dempster was lured from Hibernian. Dutch academy chief Marijn Beuker was seduced by the offer of a hefty wage and a ten-year contract. Derek McInnes and Jack Ross were offered the same before Owen Coyle settled for a three-year deal to take over as manager.
Next month, after lengthy delays, Queen’s Park finally take the keys to their new £2.6million home at Lesser Hampden. Promotion to the Premiership is a matter of when and not if.
When they renounced their amateur status in 2019, no one expected things to move this fast. Given the need to transform Lesser Hampden into a stadium capable of safely accommodating fans of Celtic, Rangers, Hearts and Hibs, it’s almost happening too fast.
While plans are in place to increase the capacity from 1,000 to 3,000 inside two years, another promotion could force Lord Haughey to dig deep once again and rent Hampden back from the SFA for a season in the Premiership.
With spending on this scale, fears of a new Gretna are inevitable. The cost base of Queen’s Park is unsustainable on average crowds of 1,000. Bluntly, the club depend on a sugar daddy for their survival.
To become less reliant on one of Scotland’s wealthiest men, they want Beuker to develop a world-class youth academy, brimming with the Andy Robertsons of the future.
It’s hard to think of too many clubs who have pulled that off. Yet, shaping up for their first assault on the top flight since 1958, Queen’s Park stand on the verge of relevance once more.
For the first time in living memory, their future looks brighter than their past.