Came across this article this evening, an incredibly moving piece written for Loft For Words. Puts things in perspective whilst also articulating precisely the bonds that football creates within families. Fantastic. I shall say no more. http://www.fansnetwork.co.uk/footba...he_love_of_queens_park_rangers_–_guest_column Life, death and the love of Queens Park Rangers â guest column Wed 23rd May 2012 23:52 by Ian Elmer Ian Elmer on the toughest end to the season imaginable, on and off the field. My father passed away on Sunday March 4, 2012. It was the day after QPR held Everton to a creditable draw at Loftus Road. For more than 20 years we had been season ticket holders at the club and had experienced just about everything that football could offer us -except perhaps a trophy or two. We had been through it all together, from the heady days of the old First Division to punching above our weight in the glamorous new Premier League to the depths of administration and relegation to League One, and on to ultimate redemption and a return to the top flight. Up until Christmas he had been a sprightly seventy one year old that would regularly outpace me on the walk back to White City Station after a match. Then, just before Christmas Eve, he was diagnosed with terminal cancer and in the space of three months was unable to walk more than a few paces and was suddenly lying in a bed in a local hospice. The day of the Everton match was the day he was moved there; I had no intention of going to the game but he persuaded me to go. He knew what was coming, but he also knew how strong the football bond and the love of our club was between us. When I said I wasn't going he looked at me as if I was mad and sent me on my way. So I went to the match and was encouraged by a fighting performance by the team and the fact that my dad was in a safe place where he could receive the right kind of help. I generally felt better than I had done all year. The next day he was dead and the world collapsed around me. On the day of our next home match, against Liverpool, some 18 days later, it goes without saying that my state of mind was not at its best. My father had not, in truth, attended a match for most of the year as his condition deteriorated but until he had died there was always some residual hope that he would be back at my side one day. Now as I walked from the tube station up South Africa Road to the ground, alone, I realised that it would always be this way and that a routine that had been with me for more than two decades had been ripped away in a ridiculously short space of time. My mood was not improved by having to break the news to those people who knew him but who I did not have contact details to have told them previously, watch their faces crumple and reflect my own, and then sit and watch Rangers proceed to play like absolute dogs against a Liverpool side that we all now know were hardly pulling up any trees of their own. By the time that Joey Barton had been substituted after putting in a performance that he would later admit was the worst he had ever managed, with the crowd baying for blood all around me, I had just about had enough and a lifelong relationship with my football club was wavering like a stricken boat at sea. I asked myself, why am I doing this? What is the point? I was angry. I hated the players that were shaming my beloved club. I hated the crowd that were venting their spleen whilst being oblivious to the personal tragedy I had gone through. They were all disgracing the memory of my dad and his true passion in life, his football. Why couldn't anyone see this? Then, from nowhere, something strange happened. Despite the team being comprehensively outplayed for 75 minutes Shaun Derry, yes him, took it upon himself to score his first goal in about three centuries and we had one back. The crowd rose, I stayed put and applauded out of politeness. Liverpool, who had previously passed the ball around with a swagger and confidence, suddenly began to lose the plot. Less than ten minutes later Djibril Cisse headed a second and even I got out of my seat for that one. The dying embers of enthusiasm inside me began to flicker again. By the time Jamie Mackie had poached goal number three and I had been enthusiastically bear hugged by the person next to me I had been reduced to a stunned silence as I tried to comprehend what had happened. We won the match, but even the most optimistic of supporters would have to admit we were lucky to do so. A complete fluke, I told my colleagues at work the following day, some of whom were Liverpool fans who looked almost as stunned as I was. There is no way we are staying up if we play like that I told them, a point that seemed to be backed up by a typical capitulation at Sunderland just a few days later coupled with yet another sending off. Shortly after I wrote an obituary for inclusion in the QPR programme and to the clubâs credit they got back to me straight away to offer their condolences and inform me that it would appear in the programme for the Swansea game. I was happy, the embers got stoked a little more, but the pragmatist in me was already writing off the season as a bad job in all sorts of ways. But incredibly it seemed the team itself didn't agree with me. The rag tag collection of highly paid professionals that had previously played with each other with all the enthusiasm of strangers meeting at a work party started to gel. Individuals started to shine. Samba Diakite, a person with surely more than one screw loose in his cranium and who I had watched have easily the most inauspicious debut in a QPR shirt I have ever seen against Fulham in February, started to look like a classy, if not somewhat maverick, figure in our midfield. The aforementioned Cisse, with enough mental problems of his own to be getting on with nevertheless became a vital source of goals in our bid to avoid the drop. Adel Taraabt found his shooting boots. Away form was dire but at home we became a real force, beating all comers not by fluke but by putting in solid, effective performances. The likes of Arsenal and Spurs were dispatched. The highly publicised nightmare run in to the end of our season was beginning to become more of a surreal dream. My dad's obituary was duly published and we brushed the Swans aside with ease. I still hated the walk to the stadium but left with a warm glow only dampened by the thought inside me that my father would have absolutely loved this. By the time it came to the last game of the season -whilst I happily and very consciously made all efforts to downplay our chances of staying up to all who enquired - to be brutally honest I almost knew it would all work out ok. Something had inexorably changed on the night of the Liverpool match and had pulled both my team and I back from the brink of the abyss. On the day of the Man City match I played with my children and maintained radio silence until a quarter to five, only then consulting my mobile phone. When a quick browse of the BBC website informed me that we were 2-1 up and down to ten men I hardly gave it a second glance. A quick check of the Bolton score told me what I already knew was going to be the case. They had drawn; we had somehow managed to stay up. I was equally unsurprised when just minutes later we had lost our own game, and although I was happy for Manchester City I even allowed myself to feel just the tiniest tinge of disappointment that we hadnât held out to full time. A short time later I turned to my wife and told her that I couldnât believe my dad wasnât around to experience this. She told me that it may well have been him that had sorted it all out, divine intervention from above if you like. Well, I will be frank, Iâm not a religious man. Nor am I a believer in life after death, or that my father is now sitting watching his football behind the pearly gates, let alone persuading the big man to help a small club in West London survive to mix it with the big boys in the Premiership next season. But I must admit it I like the idea of him dancing a little jig on some cloud somewhere as Jamie Mackieâs header hit the roof of the Manchester City net. Thatâs not the point of all this really. I think what I am trying to say here is that there is nothing that QPR can throw at me that can ever match the love I felt for my father, or the sheer desperation and longing and hurt that I still feel now that he has been taken away from me. But because my father, my football team and I have been so closely linked throughout the years the fact that somehow Rangers managed to find a way of surviving, even if he couldnât have, has at least given me some kind of feeling of redemption. I know without a shadow of a doubt that it would have given my father immense satisfaction in the way it all panned out. He was simple man my dad. He loved his family, he liked a quiet drink and he was passionate about his football team. He could have chosen to follow a bigger club, all his brothers were Chelsea fans, but for some reason he chose to plump for the underdog in QPR and all the twists and turns and highs and lows that go with them. In doing so he inexorably tied my life in to that club as well and God help me (if you will pardon the religious quote just this once) I love him all the more for that. Thank you dad, and roll on next season⦠Tweet @loftforwords Pictures â Action Images
Have to agree with you Liverpool... and thanks Ian for sharing your story with us - and to that FANtastic dad of yours for rescuing our season. RIP mate - cos somehow, I just know you will!
I agree with your sentimentality offered Brix. It's not our Liverpool_RRRs who is the writer. ( I hope I have that right. Sorry if I'm at cross purposes here. ) But I'm pretty sure it is written by someone named Ian Elmer, who may well be on our board under a different guise. As far as I'm aware RRRs is a student and is more likely to be practising making babies than of had them. Nevertheless, a very moving and well written piece that should touch even the most hardest of souls.
Yes indeed, and a mighty fine toast that will be. I can't wait for next season. I'm missing it already.
Fantastic writing. And proof that our chaotic little club can and is more than just a football club - it's a way of drawing families together, and a medium of coping in some ways. If the author is on these boards, then I'm sorry your Dad couldn't have shared one last end of season jig with you. Very,very well written. And thank you for sharing such personal memories.
Well there goes my tough guy on the tube image. A very moving piece indeed. QPR is also the means by which my dad and I have spent a great deal of our lives together - a shared passion, but one I acquired through him, just as he did with his dad. My condolences, mr Elmer, may your dad rest in peace.
Apologies if it came across that I had written it, didn't mean to! It was indeed Ian Elmer as it says at the bottom of teh article and as much as I wish I could write with as much elegance and style as him, I have to make do with scribbling down essays on the French Resistance in exams at the moment! Fortunately I'm still lucky enough to be able to attend games with my Dad (and Uncle and two cousins to boot, a real contingent!) but can't imagine the days where I have to go without him. Hopefully by then I'll have a kid of my own whose learned from his/her Grandad that there's no way but the Rangers way! As for the character profile Nines, I am indeed a student, though not for much longer - graduating in to the real world in July! As for the other thing... well let's just say practice makes perfect! I'll be staying up in Liverpool for another year or so I reckon so more away games than home ones for me, then hopefully moving down to London or the outskirts in the not so distant future to reclaim a season ticket at HQ!
I follow Ian on twitter and remember reading the tweets he was writing. it did bring a lump to your throat especially as my old man died only a few months before.
Blimey. My Mum died on Tuesday night. I've just this minute finished drafting her eulogy. I'm came on here to be distracted... Mum was a proud Wiganite and it was fitting that we both stayed up. Actually, I'm out of words for now. Thanks for posting
my old man was a car bloke, I get that interest from him. old jags especially. I wouldn't like to add up the amount we spent buying and doing them up and never making our money back!
they were all great, they were all massive and they will all be remembered by the QPR faithfull Good luck to all former hoop supporters and the masses will never forget you... RIP all those we have lost! farflung- esp to you mate!
