The New QPR Book "Hooped Dreams" - Q&A With Author

This is the book that Pete/Scott were talking about a few months ago.

Hasnt quite gone according to plan has it ??

Oh dear...

- Looking forward to reading the book, Pete.....


I think Pete, though it would have been an appropriate action for you to have posted on WATRB rather than just have posted "new book" - you would said "As noted today by QPR Report on his site...
It's what I always do when I see something posted on another board that wasn't just immediately "Out there." As do others.

Rather than without even a nod to QPR Report, just.... "WATRB - "New Book..And Our Interview With Author" or a freshly-posted 'sticky' - "Hooped Dreams by Mick Kelly"

I'm not in it

So at last we will find out (as promised) who it was that told Pete about the bung that Sousa would have got for the Portuguese defender.....

Or not

i's wait till Gianni goes...now THAT is a book

(and yes, it is/will happen)

I think you'll find a major national journo will be doing it

I'd have thought his usual ghost writer Paul Wartburton would pen it for him.
Either way I'm sure it will be a fantastic work of fiction.

Good Luck to Mick Kelly, but you can tell the whole raison d'etre behind this book is that Mick thought we were destined for the bright lights of The Premiership when he started this book, things however didnt go according to plan, being a QPR fan Mick should have planned for this, reading the schpiel for the book above it all seems hopelessly out of date / touch with how qpr fans REALLY feel & the state that the club is REALLY in.

I maintain that there is still a great book about QPR yet to be written & if you were wondering, its a scathing brutal critique.

Its no good having club apparatchiks & club "Legends" like "Cookie" & Bircham being interviewed about how great everything is & how lucky we all are to have these people involved when the reality is somewhat different.

We are QPR, not Club PR.

I'll still read the book, but you know.................?

I don't think it's a "PR" book - it's enough to look at the cover to say so. But the description sounds too tepid to buy it let alone read the whole [not so] "epic story".

i concur with KIRs thoughts about reason for book. When Dowie was hired, he knew this division and how to get out of it. we had beaten Villa a small miracle and actually were in 6th place when out of nowhere they discharge him, then hire someone highly recommended. . Unless he was let go for some dreadful issue that we dont know about, I could then see we had gone from a serious club to a flying circus. Now headed to the same mediocrity that we have been fighting for years.

It was only when the french aristocrats were headed for the guillotine did some of them start to look at their behaviours and realise the masses were right. Not condoning any of the hostile behaviours from last night, but one can see where it might come from.
It will make no difference to Flav as he is sure his approach is correct.

We are stuck with what we have which sounds like an ever worsening of the quality of play. Also that this will push flav to another change. Did he come to QPR to rescue it? Or to use it subconsciously as an object of his derision as he spends lavishly on himself and his entourage, while letting us struggle with loaned strikers, no strikers, unknown foreign players.

these behaviours drive fan derision and contempt. I said earlier that it is despicable but Im sorry to say I think we will see more of it.

We are committed. We're one-club people. So our focus is always on the same thing. Players, managers, 'investors', moneylenders and others are different.

QPR is just a move in their game. A stepping stone. When you use stepping stones, your only interest in them is that they don't topple over before you can safely get your foot on the next one.

So it is almost axiomatic that their goal is not QPR, because they will be moving on from QPR, but what is beyond QPR. Suggesting that they won't be putting everything they've got into QPR, more likely that they'll be getting everything out of QPR they can to get them to the next stage of their journey.

John Bloom almost took us into oblivion, but the directors rejected him and plumped for Gregory. Not bad, except Gregory would have consigned us to oblivion at once - and at the end of our most successful season ever. He never gave up the idea, and stated that there was no alternative to wiping out QPR on his departure in 1987. Once again, the supporters, local authority and others blocked the attempt.

His successors, Marler and then Bulstrode, came to QPR for that specific reason. Their successor, Thompson, left QPR alone, but recently tried to prise Griffin Park away from Brentford - merely for profit, as he said himself, he was always more honest than most. And he left us for Leeds, a Club which has since reversed all that Revie achieved, although whether this had anything to do with Thompson's consortium I don't know.

Thompson was succeeded by Wright, who, together with his underlings and successors - Blackburn & Co - was discovered secretly planning to close the Club down and (presumably) sell off the Ground.

And, as we know, we were 'saved' from them by Paladini.

Gregory moved to another Club. Thompson did. Marler had its finger in Fulham, Chelsea and QPR. Fayed wanted Chelsea and proposed joining forces to Bates (what a combination THAT would have been). Noades sold Wimbledon to Hammam who sold off the Ground, moved Wimbledon to ... Noades at Selhurst ... who helped himself to Selhurst, then, some time after Wimbledon had been destroyed, sold it to Jordan, who proposes to redevelop it for housing for his property company's clients. AFC Wimbledon were driven out of business by their chairman, whatisname - the bloke who disposed of them to MK Dons, while Bates went to Leeds, having taken Chelsea to the brink of bankruptcy and disposed of the Ground. Nick Blackburn is at West Ham, is he? While Wright, who sold off Wasps ground and was trying to merge us with Wimbledon to sell ours, I assume, was last heard of him wandering around Wycombe or somewhere.

It occurs to me that they may not really ever think about QPR at all. Or, if they do, that they do so only in the way an employee thinks about his employer. Not as someone or something he loves, just as a temporary association, with whom he has no enduring connection, commitment or interest.

He just takes what he needs, does what he is obliged to do - by the rules or circumstances - and forgets all about it when he leaves.

Otherwise, we'd expect those who are still alive to come to QPR regularly to this day, wouldn't we?

I wonder how often Wright comes. Or Thompson. They could afford the new prices. So could Nick Blackburn I daresay.

So maybe we consistently read ourselves into them. Maybe QPR is just a mirror. when you look in the mirror, you don't see the mirror, you see yourself.

And what an admirable chap one finds oneself to be, as a rule.

There wont be anything controversial in it. after all we have 3 of the quickest Sue-ers around at our club.

PR book at my guess. What would be interesting is the chapters dedicated to Jackie Bass, Tony Roberts, Sheila Marson, Bill Power.......