Memories of Royce attack as QPR head to Stoke –(loftforwords)

Memories of Royce attack as QPR head to Stoke – history

Stoke City 1 QPR 2, Saturday December 3, 2005, Championship

One month ago nobody knew Aaron Cawley from the next man. The 21-year-old Leeds United fan from Cheltenham was recognised only by the police intelligence officers charged with keeping a lid on the club’s notorious travelling support as he’d previously breached two banning orders for other football violence related crimes.

That all changed on Friday October 19 during a bitter Yorkshire derby between Leeds and Sheffield Wednesday at Hillsborough. The away fans spent the majority of the game singing about previous accusations of child abuse – of which he was cleared – against Owls manager Dave Jones, while the home fans retorted with songs about two Leeds fans killed in Turkey during their Champions League campaigns a decade ago. On the field Michael Brown and Miguel Llera continued the abysmal behaviour and were both fortunate not to be sent off. It was a night to shame the sport long before Cawley entered the stage.

But, after a day downing beer and vodka, Cawley became the talking point of the evening after Michael Tonge struck a spectacular equaliser. In the post-goal euphoria he was one of several visiting supporters to invade the field, but he did not go there with celebration in mind. Cawley made a bee-line for Wednesday goalkeeper Chris Kirkland, running up on his blind side and striking him hard, below the chin, with the balls of his hands. Kirkland collapsed to the ground – Neil Warnock later condemned the goalkeeper for going down too easily – and Cawley returned to the away end beaming and taking the back slapping congratulations from the other Leeds fans.

Social media sprang into action. Cawley’s picture was quickly distributed across Twitter and Facebook and he was swiftly identified. Within two days he’d been arrested and within a week (amazing how quickly these things are dealt with when you’re not the England captain) he was jailed and slapped with another six year ban from attending Leeds matches.

The QPR fans observed all this with wry smiles and knowing nods. They drew perplexed looks from work colleagues and questions on Twitter when they suggested that perhaps Sheffield Wednesday should be fined for the incident and Leeds let off altogether.

The reason for the cynicism was a game Rangers had played at Stoke City in November 2005. Things had not been going well for QPR prior to kick off: finances were tightening; Gianni Paladini had taken control of the boardroom and a serious of odd signings had been made; Ian Holloway’s men had lost four and drawn one of the previous three and life president Harold Winton had gone public saying that it was perhaps time for Olly to be replaced despite him winning promotion to the Championship 18 months previous.

Stoke is known as a tough place for visiting teams to go, but QPR have enjoyed their trips to the Britannia Stadium since it was built and came into this game on the back of a 1-0 win the season before thanks to a goal from Kevin Gallen. There was bad blood left over from that game however as Marc Bircham’s play acting had seen Gerry Taggert sent off before the goal went in. The QPR fans were pelted with missiles outside the away end after the final whistle. Stoke wanted revenge and were in good form – three wins from their previous four and five goals in four matches from striker San Bangoura.



The game, to be honest, was absolutely awful. Bangoura got his goal, after 26 minutes, but it was actually an equaliser rather than an opener because veteran striker Paul Furlong had bundled one in for the visitors during a goal mouth scramble in the opening minute.

Parity restored, it seemed like Stoke would go onto win, but Rangers stuck to their task and made a crucial breakthrough seven minutes after half time. Furlong thought he was in to score again but was hauled back by John Halls in the process of converting at the far post. Halls was sent off, Richard Langley converted the penalty, and Rangers hung on for the win.

As the QPR fans made their way out of the stadium, a commotion developed at the far end of the pitch. Two Stoke fans had run onto the field and one had set upon goalkeeper Simon Royce as he went to pick up his kit bag from the back of the net. Rather than a single punch, this was a prolonged scrap and Royce had to wrestle the man into the netting to protect himself. With no stewards in sight Danny ****tu, Ian Evatt and other QPR players moved in to protect their goalkeeper.

The attacker was jailed for three months but at the subsequent FA hearing Stoke City escaped without punishment because it was deemed that they couldn’t be held responsible for the action of one supporter – in complete contradiction to every fine ever handed out to clubs for crowd violence in the history of the sport and apparently creating a precedent whereby clubs could not be punished for fans running onto the field to attack players or officials in the future. QPR meanwhile were fined for failing to control the players who went to help Royce.

It’s a decision that still rankles among the QPR fans that were there, and the wounds were reopened by Mr Cawley’s pathetic actions in Sheffield last month.