Football Snippets Sunday - Magilton Bookies' Axe Favourite?...Lee Camp for Scotland?...Don Givens, Stuart Wardley, Nick Ward, Vignal Updates

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- Compilation of Match Reports & Comments for QPR vs Blackpool

- Earlier Match Reports and Managerial Comments

- Gregory Vignal Played for Birmingham Yesterday, on Trial

- Rules re Bookings/Sending Offs and Length of Suspension

- On This Day (August 9) Flashbacks

- Flashback to last season's opening day vs Barnsley - and Eleven years ago vs Sunderland

- Q&A With Ossie Ardiles

- What Makes a True Football Fan?

- England Squad vs Holland (August 12)

- Accrington Stanley Captain Banned

- Magilton Insists He's The Boss at QPR

- QPR Season Predictions: What They All Said


From When Saturday Comes (WSC) re QPR "Wide Open Championship"
- "...QPR can match Man City and Chelsea in terms of their owners' combined wealth and have been able to spend £3.5 million on an Argentine striker, Alejandro Faurlin. Then again, their board have shown no patience whatsoever with any of the five managers they have appointed in under two years, so the latest incumbent, Jim Magilton, is the bookies' favourite to be the division's first dismissal." Article


Mail Sports/Mark Guidi - Scotland set to call-up keeper Lee Camp
- SCOTLAND boss George Burley is considering an international call-up for Nottingham Forest keeper Lee Camp.
- MailSport can reveal the 24-year-old is eligible because his grandfather was born in Paisley. The SFA were alerted to his availability last week and will now follow it up.
- Camp, who joined Forest from QPR this summer, played for Burley at Derby and is highly rated by the national manager who will make a personal check on him this month.
- That may well lead to the keeper's inclusion for September's World Cup double header against Macedonia and Holland.
- Meanwhile, the SFA have denied they failed to tell Graeme Souness he wasn't getting the Scotland job.
Souness claimed he wasn't personally informed that he had been unsuccessful when Burley was appointed in January last year.
The SFA, though, insist chief executive Gordon Smith left a voicemail with Souness asking him to phone back for a full explanation but he never returned the call. Sunday Mail


Former QPR STAR, DON Givens Turns 60
- Born August 9th 1949.
- Signed from Luton for 35,000 pounds in the summer of 1972 as a partial replacement for Rodney Marsh.
- The ex-Man United forward formed a forward line that was signed betwee July and October 1972: Givens, Bowles and Thomas, that took QPR out of the Second Division and was part of QPR's Championshp team in 1975/1976. Givens scored 23 goals in 41 appearances in that first season.
- Eventually was sold to Jim Smith's Birmingham in 1978 for about 150,000 pounds...Ended up playing in Switzerland. And is currently the Republic of Ireland's U-21 Coach.
- Also scored prolifically for the Republic of Ireland. Remember he scored a hatrick for Ireland and then a year to the day I think, scored another hatrick for Ireland.
- Givens Stats/Profile
- Givens Hatrick Video...Memories of Givens at QPR?


STUARDT WARDLEY - Haverhill Echo/Derek Bish - Ex-QPR striker joins Rovers
- FORMER Queens Park Rangers striker Stuart Wardley has joined Haverhill Rovers on a short-term deal.
- Wardley scored on his debut at Hamlet Croft this afternoon in the Reds'1-1 draw with Dereham Town.
- Manager Peter Betts now hopes to tie up the signing of Wardley on a permanent basis.
- Get Thursday's Echo for the latest on Wardley and the rest of the news, views and reports from the Rovers." Haverhill Echo


Nick Ward - The Age (Australia)/Jesse Hogan - The case for the defence
- TWO goals from 18 appearances - including eight starts - is a pretty unflattering statistic for an attacking midfielder. But while the quantity of Nick Ward's strikes last year for Melbourne Victory was lacking, the quality certainly wasn't.
- A persistent groin injury was the main reason he started only one match in the team's first 15. He was also watching from the bench in round 16, when the Victory conceded two goals in the first four minutes at home to arch-rival Sydney FC. Archie Thompson reduced the deficit soon after, but a scoreless next hour left Melbourne facing a fourth consecutive loss.
- With 20 minutes to go, coach Ernie Merrick threw on Ward for full-back Evan Berger, and the 23-year-old received the ball almost immediately. With no defenders around him, Ward dribbled past the halfway line, crept forward and, sensing no alternative, slammed an ambitious drive that rocketed into the net. The crowd's delirium at the 2-2 scoreline was topped only by the reaction to Ney Fabiano's match-winning goal.
- Ward doubled his season-scoring tally 10 days later by claiming the only goal of the game - a long-range header at home to Adelaide United, which effectively guaranteed Melbourne top spot.
- ''It was definitely a turning point for me because I'd been injured all season,'' Ward said. ''After that Sydney game, there was that many opportunities. One of them I've hit it from outside the box and 'Mossy' [newly arrived teammate Glen Moss] tipped it around the corner for New Zealand, and another one 'Vuka' [Central Coast's Danny Vukovic] has saved a header that was like the one I scored against Adelaide, and then another guy's cleared one off the line from me against Perth.

''I could have ended up with five or six goals. The good ones go in, but the easy ones don't seem to be.''
- While Ward kept his starting spot for the tail-end of the season, he was not able to shake the groin injury. His problem was compounded when he sustained a grade-two quadricep tear 10 days before the grand final and aggravated the injury two days before the game, but still played on.
- Having been dogged by the groin injury for two years, the exasperated West Australian took the lead of teammate Grant Brebner and had prolotherapy, treatment that involves dextrose being injected directly into muscles around the groin in a bid to create localised swelling and stimulate recovery.
- ''It's been terrible for someone like myself. I've never really had an injury before, and then to suddenly get this injury and then have it for so long … I don't like to make excuses, but it's made it tough for my career. But you keep working and try to do the right things to try and get back,'' Ward said. '' 'Brebs' had the same treatment and it worked for him, so we tried it out and it's worked for me.''
- Ward's rookie-of-the-year form in the first season of the A-League earned him a dream move to Europe, with London-based Queens Park Rangers. He enjoyed a promising start, but the move soured after a change of manager, prompting his return to Australia.
- Ward still holds an ambition to play overseas, but he will be choosy if the chance comes around again.

''I know I'm at a top team in a good environment in Australia, so I just don't want to go over for the sake of going over [to play for] a crap team in the lower divisions. That's not what I'm going to do. I'd rather stay and play in a high-quality top team in Australia, and then if the move comes it comes,'' he said.

Ward also said his 21 months with the Victory had taught him a home truth: his defensive efforts were way too slack. And when playing in front of someone as vocal as club captain Kevin Muscat, that approach was untenable.
- ''I think I've matured as a player. My defensive game's got better,'' he said. ''I used to be too gung-ho going forward, neglecting my defensive duties, whereas now I've been taught to do that side, the sort of nasty bits of football. They're the basics you've got to do and then the other things will come.''
- Despite Ward's enthusiasm about his pre-season, he found himself on the bench for the Victory's first match of the season on Thursday night, with coach Ernie Merrick preferring to pair the more defensive-focused Brebner and Leigh Broxham in the centre of midfield.
- But the team's shock 2-0 loss to the Central Coast Mariners could work in Ward's favour when it comes to this week's team, especially as his 15-minute cameo showed him to be the most creative of Melbourne's midfielders on the night. The Age