Listened to Stan tributes on Open All Rs and R Generation podcasts. A good listen. Stan - QPRs most loved footballer is very accurate
Just listened to the Open All Rs one... https://open.spotify.com/episode/2xFDkbZdRdTmQS8R9kdReO?si=8ZOKC3MaRq2OQgmvEQ9xqw Quite emotional
This is probably firewalled but a lovely piece by Matt Dickinson on Stan and the occasion on Wednesday. https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/...1?shareToken=1a563ef7f418f6675e42ea40f1c498b7
Paywall bypassed... Stan Bowles farewell showed longing for days of unpolished heroes QPR’s tribute at Loftus Road was a sad goodbye not only to ‘Stan the Man’ but also to an era when players thrived despite trips to the pub and screeching up at the ground just before kick-off Matt Dickinson, Senior Sports Writer The air was thick with yearning as Queens Park Rangers and their fans paid the fondest of tributes to Stan Bowles on Wednesday night. It was as if we were breathing in pure nostalgia. Loss and celebration of an extraordinary life made for an emotional mix, even for those too young to have seen Bowles anywhere other than YouTube. “Forty-five years ago but it’s great you can still see him on video,” Gerry Francis said in a half-time address, as he compared his former team-mate to the greatest. “Stan was doing it before Messi,” he noted. He was entitled to be misty-eyed about Stan the Man, whose mesmerising dribbles, bamboozling opponents with graceful feints and twists, carried QPR to within an agonising point of winning the league against the mighty Liverpool in 1975-76. In a wonderful team, Bowles was the gleaming jewel. A rare footballer’s life and death were movingly observed, yet in all the outpouring — with the QPR team in retro “10” shirts before kick-off, a giant mosaic created by fans along the stand already named after Bowles and a minute’s applause erupting in the tenth minute of a raucous night when the modern-day side played with a verve that Bowles would have admired to draw 2-2 against West Bromwich Albion — there was also something broader, deeper than one club and their irrepressible Seventies legend. please log in to view this image QPR’s match-day programme on the Loftus Road pitch before Wednesday’s game against West Brom What was it? Was it a sad farewell not only to Bowles but also his ability not to take the game ever-so-seriously? To a time when sublime talent could find its own path even if that was via the bookie, pub and screeching up outside the ground 20 minutes before kick-off, sauntering out as if football even at the highest level was, lest we forget, to be enjoyed? I wonder whether it was longing for a time when we did not find ourselves fretting over whether Marcus Rashford has been out on a late night in Belfast, then putting his name to a long, carefully scripted rebuttal, in a war of PR and spin. A wish for something raw, unvarnished. “It was just the casual way he was,” Don Shanks told the fans as he spoke of his dear friend’s combination of special ability and common touch; the shaggy-haired star who, as countless memories in recent days have recounted, would end up the life and soul of someone’s stag party despite not knowing anyone there. Or, as another supporter revealed, could readily invite a stranger to the pub as long as there was a clear understanding of who would pick up the bill. please log in to view this image Bowles shares a joke with his QPR team-mate Terry Venables in 1974 Those stories hint that Bowles’s glamour came with a shadow, and no amount of nostalgia can entirely drown out the tougher aspects of his life and times. One reason Bowles stood out for his skills was because the English game was increasingly separating itself from the technical advances on the continent. Bowles lamented the fact in one interview, bemoaning the influx of “these players who just run, run, run all day long”. As he saw it: “It may get results but it’s not very nice to watch.” We applaud the sentiment but his own nonconformity was among the reasons he won only five caps for England and, while many blame successive coaches, it was much easier for fans to indulge his rebellious streak than for his various managers who were striving to maintain some order. There were limits to what a player could get away with in any era, and Bowles explored those frontiers with a cavalier spirit. please log in to view this image Bowles possessed that combination of special ability and common touch Bumping into Martin O’Neill this week, one of the heroes of the great Nottingham Forest team, reminded me that Bowles was the man who, having been signed from QPR by Brian Clough, skipped the European Cup final in 1980 after finding out that he would not be in the starting XI, left out for the teenager Gary Mills. Bowles’s absence left Forest with an empty place on the bench for the biggest club game on the planet. It raises that eternal question of the maverick performer about whether self-discipline would have made any difference. “Will Stan be a lesser entertainer if he wasn’t thinking about the result of the 2.30 at Huntingdon?” O’Neill pondered, knowing that the answer will always be as elusive as Stan himself. Bowles never seemed to spend much time on the question of whether he could, or should, change. He was Stan Bowles and he was doing it his way, unapologetically. He once walked out on his country after being taken off before the hour mark by Joe Mercer, the caretaker manager. “You can’t do this to England,” Mick Channon, his room-mate, told him as Bowles packed his bags. “Watch me,” he replied before jumping into a car and heading to the dog track at White City. please log in to view this image Bowles in action for England against Italy in 1976. He once walked out on his country after being substituted We can chuckle at the tales of Bowles staying up in Manchester, his home town, after a QPR game in the north to run out with his mates for a pub side the next day, but perhaps also have a little sympathy for Dave Sexton, the architect of that great QPR team, whose members gathered or sent fond messages on Wednesday. Among them was Shanks, who did not duck his friend’s waywardness — of his gambling addiction, Bowles’s mother reputedly said that if he invested in a cemetery, people would stop dying — but had the balance just right for the occasion when he brought thoughts back to that rare talent. “He had problems in life but on the football field he just had total control,” Shanks said. “I could go down the gambling stories and the nights in places we should not have been but, at the end of the day, we have some great memories and I look to the great times we had and the happiness he brought to everyone in football.” please log in to view this image Wreaths are laid next to the centre spot before QPR’s 2-2 draw with West Brom What resonated most was when he talked of Bowles walking on to the pitch in those blue-and-white hoops. “He had no fear,” Shanks said. Bowles epitomised the notion that football was, above all, about fun and freedom of expression. Standing to mark the various ceremonies, it was probably not easy for the players of today to connect to this celebrated predecessor who died aged 75 after a long period with Alzheimer’s. They may have felt little in common, certainly with his dilettante approach to preparation or ignoring instruction. But perhaps in the captivating highlights of Bowles’s dribbles and goals up on the big screen, they saw something in the exuberance and daring, given that a ferocious fightback against West Brom included Steve Cook, the big centre half, almost scoring the goal of this season, or any other, with a bicycle kick. There have been some grim times at QPR in the past couple of years but, perhaps more than most, this was a night of powerful expression. Bowles would have been heartened.
Leeds fan who remembers the so called 'mavericks' of that time....the Hudson's, Currie's,marsh, George, Worthington etc and your own Stanley... playing on more mud than grass at the time and never appreciated by the f.a. as proved by the amount of caps those players received, a travesty that was stupid and ignorant, saw all these magnificent players many times and they were all greats no matter who you support....Stan 'hoops' bowlers r.i.p.
Didn’t that page 3 photo cause a bit of a stir at the time. Don’t think his Mrs was too pleased either.
