Express Columnist Mick Dennis Responds to QPR Reader

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Daily Express columnist, Mick Dennis wrote an article re QPR's new ownership "This is No Way to Go which elicited quite a bit of criticism on a number of QPR messageboards. Mick Dennis responded to one person who emailed him personally. Below is his response. Reprinted with permission of both the writer, Mick Dennis and the recipient.


From Mick Dennis
To:
Subject: RE: 'This is no way to go'
Date: Thu, 10 Jan 2008
I have been deluged with responses and will point out in next Wednesday's column that the passion of QPR supporters does them proud -- and it's not their fault the club has been allowed to rot.
Mick


From Mick Dennis
To:
Subject: RE: 'This is no way to go'
Date: Wed, 9 Jan 2008

Hi
I first went to QPR in the 1960s, when I was growing up in Hounslow. I used to go to all the West London clubs -- Brentford, Chelsea, Fulham and the R's as well as Hounslow Town, who were a decent amateur team. I did not support any of them, in the conventional sense, but I certainly wanted QPR to win when I was watching them. I used to stand behind the goal at the School End, and I joined in the chant of "Henry, Henry" in awed admiration of the great Terry Mancini.

In the 70s I began work as a journalist and my first job was on the Eastern Daily Press in Norfolk. I could only watch one club -- Norwich City. I became hooked, and although my route to supporting Norwich was unusual, I have been a fan ever since. When I got my first Fleet Street sports reporting job, in 1978, I moved to Hertfordshire. As well as visiting Loftus Road professionally quite often, I have taken my family there for the odd game when work has allowed and when we couldn't get to Norwich.
I have also managed to watch Norwich at your place several times in the last few years -- and yes, we've lost most of those game, but that is not why I came to view Rangers as a badly run club.
That began when, as deputy sports editor of the (London) Evening Standard, I conducted a survey of all the London clubs for ES Magazine. I took my two sons, who were both very young at the time, to every London ground for a match and looked at things like prices and facilities.
Despite feeling well-disposed to QPR, they came bottom of my survey. The unhelpful attitude of the stewards, the prices and quality of refreshments and the poor condition of the Ellerslie Road Stand were all factors, but the clincher was that the QPR match (against Liverpool) was the only time during the entire survey that my boys were frightened.
There was only one toilet we could access from the Ellerslie Road stand, and it only had one door -- for both in and out. My lads were crushed by the mob and both cried with fear. I wrote a private letter to the club about the issue of poor access to the toilet and received an astonishingly rude reply. I am sorry to say that I cannot remember what year that was, but it would have been about 89.
As I say, I have made several visits to the away end as a Norwich fan, and they have all been awful -- not because of the football (Norwich won some of them!) but because, although I have watched Norwich at more than 80 grounds, the QPR experience is among the worst.
The catering facilities are certainly among the worst. I'd say Port Vale are the only ones I have encountered where the staff care less and have worse equipment than at Loftus Road. On one visit, the kiosks were both shut until one, dispirited girl arrived ten minutes before kick-off and opened one. A huge queue formed. She fiddled about for a while and then announced: "Sorry, there's no hot water". Then she closed the kiosk again.
The School End stand IS dank. The area behind both the upper and lower tiers is completely enclosed by concrete and not properly ventilated. I've been dripped on by condensation (I hope it was condensation!) while queuing for the terribly inadequate refreshments. And, since the club was forced to put extra gangways into the seating to comply with safety requirements, there are odd dead-end arrangements and random bits of metal.

Professionally, I've had lots of dealings with QPR. I interviewed Chris Wright for the Standard when he was your chairman and, in response to my outlining some of the above to him, he said that Jim Gregory had put the stands up on the cheap and that there were all sorts of design faults.

John Gregory told me that, on his first day as manager, he was astonished to find a plank of wood, the sort you put on scaffolding, in the middle of the changing room floor at the training ground. When he asked what it was doing there, everyone just shrugged. It had been there for years, someone said. Gregory was definitely of the opinion that the club had been allowed to decay. That was his phrase.
All those accumulated experiences, plus the shambles of the gun episode, the blackmail allegations etc, led me to the view that, over the last couple of decades, QPR have become a shoddy little club. I don't expect you to agree.
Of course clubs in trouble welcome wealthy benefactors. As a Norwich fan, I am hugely appreciative of Delia Smith's efforts on our behalf. She rescued us from the brink of insolvency, but the super-rich backers (Like Abramovich and Mittal) are of an entirely different order. Abramovich's presence in the Premiership has been hugely inflationary, as other clubs have tried to keep in touch, and I think it is a terrible development if that trend is now going to spread to the Championship.
I picked my words carefully when I talked about those who "toiled to pay bills, worked hard to improve the stadiums and striven to get the football right". QPR did not always pay their bills. They went into administration, as a method of welching on debts. They did not work hard to improve the stadium. And now they are not trying to get the football right. They are just going to buy their way out of the division.
I understand your passion and it does you credit. I genuinely thank you for responding to my column.
Regards, Mick Dennis