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Thursday, May 07, 2009

Swansea Confirm QPR Contact...News of World's Aidan Magee on QPR Millenium Stadium Final...Ex-QPR News

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- Make one visit to the free-thinking and completely independent QPR Report Messageboard. Read the up-to-date QPR news and eclectic football developments....the serious discussions where football (and only football) matters are discussed...Experience a board where differing opinions are welcomed not denigrated: QPR Report Messageboard. And then return! Feel free to comment on any items on this blog. Or just offer your persepctive on other QPR matters. ! Posted Articles
- Former QPR Tony Sealy, Turns Fifty
- Alan McDonald, Successful at Glentoran, Apparently Staying
- Martin Allen Exposed
- Flashback: The Proposed Blitz Loan
- Government Telling Premiership Clubs to Share Wealth
- A look at Huddersfield's Stadium: Owners, Finances and Fights
- Arrests at Real Madrid
- Brazil: Trophy Catches Fire


This is Swansea - Jenkins rejects QPR's interest in Pratley
- SWANSEA City have insisted they have no interest in selling Darren Pratley after receiving an enquiry from Queens Park Rangers.
- The London club's sporting director, Gianni Paladini, contacted Huw Jenkins about Pratley last week.
But the Swansea chairman has declared that the midfielder is not for sale.
"I had a very, very brief phone conversation with QPR," Jenkins confirmed to the Evening Post.
"There was no offer made or discussed whatsoever.
"It was a general conversation where Darren's name was mentioned and I told him that we had no interest in selling. Darren is one of our bright young players and he is under contract, so that's the end of that." This is Swansea


Football League - PRESS BOX: AIDAN MAGEE
- News of the World football writer Aidan Magee looks back on QPR's big night - and giving a girlfriend the elbow.
- Back in 2003, covering Queens Park Rangers was a rare treat for a freelance reporter on the Championship beat.
- The Hoops were trying to fight their way out of League 1 under Ian Holloway after spending the majority of the previous decade sliding down the football pyramid.
- Most of the media were concentrating their resources on the top two divisions.
- Any club below that level seemed to have to blaze a trail up Mount Everest - or at the very least be involved in the Play-Offs - to earn a mention on TV, radio or in the newspapers.
- And, sure enough - just this once - that's where Rangers found themselves.
- One defeat in the final 12 games had created a buzz at QPR for the first time in 10 years. It took me back to my teens and made me more determined to be part of it.
- After two seasons of rain-soaked tours of Gillingham, Brighton & Hove Albion, Watford, Millwall and Reading, I felt I had earned the right to cover my team against Oldham Athletic in the semi-final first leg at Loftus Road - the club's biggest game in years.
- It wouldn't be too difficult to argue that plenty more significant events happened in 2003.
- There was Gulf War II and the worldwide outbreak of SARS.
- The Darkness rocked the charts, Roger Federer came of age at Wimbledon and England won the Rugby World Cup in Australia.
- Paul Furlong's scruffy winner eight minutes from time, which earned Rangers a Millennium Stadium showdown against Cardiff City, wasn't quite Nick Hornby's Michael Thomas moment in Fever Pitch but, somehow, life was never the same again.
- Three other less noteworthy events occurred that week.
- I moved into a new flat, applied for a new job and in an especially productive week I managed to end a relationship which had long since run its course.
- Believe it or not, telling a girlfriend 'it's over' was a good deal more straightforward than maintaining a professional demeanour in the Press Box when Furlong's goal triggered the celebrations that wiped out a decade of misery.
- I gave my desk a decent whack with my fist! In all honesty, I longed to be on the pitch dancing like a lunatic with Danny Shittu.
- We had sunk pretty low. And so it was great to experience what good times really felt like. Loftus Road was deafening that night.
- We'll never know if QPR would have avoided an extra-time final defeat to Cardiff if a fire alarm hadn't disrupted their sleep at 3am at the team hotel.
- It didn't matter that much as, with three friends, we made our way back down the M4- Life was moving on for me. Rangers won promotion the following year.
- And I got the job." Football League