the ends of some eras

While clearly struggling of late, QPR are in the Premier League and playing their home matches in the familiar surroundings of a ground that the club has called home for all but three of the last ninety-five football seasons. Flux has been the norm for the Rangers over the years, as demonstrated in the last few hours by the departure of manager Neil Warnock after just twenty-two eventful months in charge. But, for now at least, the players run around on the same scrap of land used by their predecessors for generations. A man well into his retirement can park his backside on a blue or white plastic seat in pretty much the same spot where he stood or sat to watch the heroes of his youth lumbering about in thick cotton jerseys and kicking a pudding-like ball across a sea of mud.

None of this can be said of the opponents QPR faced for Saturday's third round FA Cup tie. The trip made by over 5000 of the Rangers travelling faithful was to England's strangest town, now home to the football club stolen from its original supporters in the London Borough of Merton, almost sixty miles away.

It seems fitting that a club created in such unusual circumstances should offer such a strange match day experience. Given the grandness of the vision first outlined more than  a decade ago by Milton Keynes Dons supremo Pete Winkelman, visiting supporters might expect a slick, professionally presented football product, albeit one whose newness and strangeness might not be to everyone's taste. But that isn't the case. Instead, it's about traipsing through a supermarket car park to get to a ground that looks as though it was abandoned by the builders when still under construction. It's about catering that's every bit as woeful as what's on offer at lower league grounds up and down the country.

At the start of the twenty-first century, Winkelman was Managing Director of a property consortium supported by retail giants Asda and IKEA. The consortium was looking to launch a large development in the Denbigh area of Milton Keynes, including a retail park, a hotel and conference centre and, the crowing glory, a 30,000-seater football stadium. The version of events described by an independent group of Wimbledon supporters contends that although the consortium described an Asda superstore as an enabling development to finance the building of the stadium, the opposite was in fact the case. The Wimbledon fans' contention was that planning permission for the retail stores could not go ahead without the stadium and that the stadium could not be justified if were to be home to any of the town's lowly non-league teams. So, rather than build from the ground up by guiding an existing outfit up through the non-league pyramid, Winkelman and co. decided to prey on a Football League club with a parlous financial situation. All of this to get a big branch of Asda built? That's how the Wimbledon supporters' group would have it - their venerable and remarkable little club taken from them so that Milton Keynes could have another supermarket.

The Milton Keynes consortium were not choosy. Wimbledon F.C. were the eventual victims of the Winkelman-Asda-IKEA plot, but along the way several other clubs were targeted - Luton Town, Barnet, Crystal Palace and QPR.

Yes, QPR fans. Perhaps not all of you who made it up to Buckinghamshire this weekend realise that it could have been our club torn from its roots and replanted in the strange suburban landscape of Milton Keynes. Perhaps we would have had to build a new club from nothing. Perhaps we'd all be following a reborn AFC QPR and muttering with disgust about the hated Milton Keynes Rangers. Perhaps if this was more widely understood, more QPR fans would have racked their brains to construct hostile songs for Saturday's game. Instead, elements of the largely subdued Rangers contingent chose to sing "Premiership, we're having a laugh" when the frustrating and difficult tie took a turn for the worse and the home side got the first of two goals in what turned out to be a stalemate.

A little more impressive in its own way, was the fact that some supporters of the fledgling Milton Keynes club have adopted a philosophical and defiant stance in response to the low esteem in which their outfit is held by fans of other clubs. The Millwallesque "no one likes us, we don't care" could be heard at times.

Probably not very many QPR fans ever had much affection for Wimbledon F.C. Memories of their muscular and direct style of play and the fairly unsavoury characters on whom they often relied to grind out much-needed victories. But no one deserves to have their club taken away just so that Asda can build another store in a particularly soulless location.

Soulless, too, is the stadium whose construction could only be justified by the theft of an established but vulnerable club. Perhaps some redeeming elements of this sorry tale could be found if the new Milton Keynes ground was a state-of-the-art palace of sport. But it isn't. Sure, the seats are fairly comfortable and the views of the pitch appear to be good from all angles. But from the outside, the stadium presents a bizarre and somewhat shabby appearance. Apparently, if the need ever arises, it would be possible to boost the ground's capacity all the way up to 45,000 seats. Perhaps then the currently exposed girders would be covered. In the meantime, the stadium looks unfinished. 

This theme continues inside. An upper tier is devoid of seating. The large screen used as a scoreboard is connected to the mains by wiring that trails untidily across bare concrete and which rests on makeshift scaffolding. There are also signs of wear and tear. Although the stadium is barely four years old, large cracks can be seen on the concourse.

None of this should really detract from the matchday experience, though. Football supporters are used to less than imposing surroundings. What did matter, though, was the surprising discovery that such a new stadium had highly inadequate catering arrangements. Getting a bite to eat at half-time involved waiting for the duration of the break and missing almost ten minutes of the second half of the match. Yes, MK Dons recorded their highest-ever attendance figure on Saturday, but the size of the expected crowd had been known for days. The catering outlets just did not cope. 

The match? Pretty awful. The sight of midfield stalwart Alejandro Faurlin being stretchered off with a season-ending injury? A real sickener. Getting away from the industrial estate on which a number of fellow QPR fans had parked? A slow and frustrating business. 

So it was, then, that the short Neil Warnock era sputtered to a disappointing finish - in a half-built stadium in an Asda car park on the fringes of an unlovely town made up of shopping malls and oddly un-English housing developments. 

What next? Mark Hughes is the name being touted. Has something happened since we walked away from our neighbours Fulham, claiming that club was not ambitious enough for his liking. Is that an exciting prospect?  Let's see.

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