from today's grauniad:
Yesterday should have been a great day in the life of Ray Jones, QPR's extravagantly gifted young striker. When you're earning good money for doing something you love, have the adulation of thousands, are hugely popular with team-mates and management, and have a glittering future ahead of you, every day should be a great day. But yesterday would have been Ray Jones's 19th birthday.
It is sickening to write that 'would have been', particularly with regard to a teenager. Ray Jones died in the early hours of Saturday morning in a car accident. His friends Idris Olasupo and Jess Basilva were also killed, with the former dying hours before a letter arrived at his home, offering him a place at Fulham's youth academy. All three were teenagers, and each death is a tragedy, but I concentrate here on Jones simply because he was a QPR footballer of immense promise who provided thousands with great pleasure and excitement.
I was chatting to a friend in front of the telly on Saturday, half-watching as Soccer Saturday started. It was midday exactly. I noted absently that Jeff Stelling looked unusually sombre as he opened the show, but it didn't really register until the photo came up. Being a QPR fan, I don't get to see my team featured on TV very much, so when I recognised the strip out of the corner of my eye, I was immediately intrigued. Paying attention now, I recognised Ray Jones - the club's brightest young prospect, our own Wayne Rooney, the prodigy, all precocious talent and burgeoning potential. Then I looked at the caption, and was genuinely confused.
There was his name and, underneath, the dates: 1988-2007. It made no sense. That was how people book-ended lives, with the date of birth and of death. But that couldn't be the case here, surely? My confusion was all too short-lived. I don't know whether I turned up the volume or just tuned in to what was being said, but the words were clear enough: "... killed in a car crash in the early hours of the morning."
For those who never saw him, and you will be in the vast majority, let me tell you that Ray Jones was the real deal. You would have seen him in the future. He was that good, you knew he'd make the big time. He'd burst into the QPR side at the age of 17, and almost immediately had attracted the attention of a number of Premiership clubs. He turned them down, mindful that his chances would come sooner at QPR, where he could continue to develop in the first team.
He had all the attributes a striker needs: strength, pace, a great touch, good in the air and on the ground, intelligence, agility and, perhaps most significantly, swagger. He knew he was good, and had the self-confidence required to succeed among older, more experienced players. Yet, away from the pitch, he was known to be humble, generous and popular. He would often amble along to get the Tube home after games, happily chatting to fans and posing for photos en route.
The fans loved Ray for that, but also because he represented rich promise for the future. At QPR, we'd been floundering both on and off the pitch for a decade, sporadically haunted by the twin spectres of relegation and administration. In recent weeks, we'd had cause for optimism. Flavio Briatore was rumoured to be mounting a takeover, while John Gregory had assembled a team who actually took pride in wearing the hoops. A mixture of dedicated pros and talented local youngsters with the world at their feet was going to haul us out of the mire. Nobody epitomised this sense of optimism among the fans more than 'Ray Jay', our star of the future.
Ray hadn't played yet this season, thanks to a foot injury, but last season he played 35 times. Certain memories persist, and from now on, will have to suffice: Ray Jones coming on against Leeds in the first game of last season and terrifying their defence, inspiring QPR to an injury-time equaliser, and almost getting the winner. His extraordinary goal against Southampton; the perfect combination of determination, speed and skill. His winner against table-topping Cardiff at Ninian Park. Or, more personally, the moment when I realised how good he was - a dazzling step-over and cross, from 10 feet in front of me in an otherwise abject game at Selhurst Park. As a supremely gifted teenager, he was doing things for real that his peers acted out on their games consoles.
And so, for the second time in 15 months, QPR buries one of its youngest stars. Last year, Kiyan Prince was stabbed to death trying to break up a fight outside his school. He was 15. The memory of the tributes outside Loftus Road is all too fresh: The poignancy of the shirt with his name on it, the scarves, cards, flowers and flags. And now, unbelievably, there's another shrine, a different name on the shirt, the same tragedy of a teenager, full of promise, lost before he's barely begun along the road of life.
You can bet that football will pay its respects in a moving, heartfelt, powerful way, as football always does. The shirts, scarves, flags and flowers, the minute of silence or applause that makes your hair stand on end and your eyes sting with tears. It will be done particularly beautifully at QPR because, heartbreakingly, we're getting rather good at it.
