A Magical Moment

I've already mentioned that the first home game of the new football season featuring QPR vs Millwall is the 50th anniversary of my first ever live football match. That day we also played Millwall, and I just found a press photo from that game, showing Rodney Marsh scoring the opening goal.

If the stand in the background is the South Africa Road stand, then I think somewhere around Entrance J, row V, seats 140-something you would have found my father, his friends and me. I have highlighted the blurry blob in the top right-hand corner of the photograph. One of those grey bits is me!

50 years of fandom. And 50 years of friendship and adventures. I'm thinking particularly of Geoffrey Davis, Albert H Friedlander, & Sallie Levy Lunn, may they rest in peace (and use whatever influence they may have to help us this season!).

Koff Koff Years of Supporting QPR

Ok it isn't EXACTLY fifty years to the day, but the opening day of the 1971-72 season saw Millwall visit Loftus Road and since this match was 4 days before my birthday, my father was finally persuaded to take me with him to the stadium.

I'm ashamed to say that the only memory I have of that day is of being very small, and the pitch seeming very large and extremely green from high up in the back of the SAR stand where we were sitting. O, and my dad, Uncle Geoffrey & Henry Pincus passing a little silver flask back and forth over my head.

The team that I saw was:  Parkes, Clement, Gillard, Venables, Hunt, Hazell, Busby, Francis, McCulloch, Marsh, Leach.  The final score was 1-1 with Dunphy scoring for them, and Marsh for us. However, as I said, I have no pictures in my head of football. But thanks to the magic of the internet: 

This has a goal by Rodney Marsh. The first goal I ever saw live!

This has Millwall's equaliser. The records say it was Dunphy, but it looks more like an own goal to me.

ANYWAY, the purpose of all this is to point out that this coming Saturday, QPR begin the new season at home to ... Millwall. What a coincidence. Were it not for all the travel difficulties caused by the current Covid situation, I would be next to my friend Chris in the SAR stadium, celebrating this anniversary. 50 years of fandom. Thank you to Uncle Geoffrey for converting my father, newly-arrived from the USA, into a follower of the Superhoops. Thank you, Daddy, for the best birthday present of my life. And thank you for all the friends I've made and adventures I've had because of this passion. COYRS!