Post by QPR Report on Jan 1, 2010 15:39:13 GMT
Final paragraph...Of course it was a different QPR...
Football 365
F365 Memories: Tears, Shades & Rangers
Posted 20/12/09 19:16EmailPrintSave
To celebrate the end of the decade, Football365's finest have been gazing back through time to recall their most memorable moment of the last ten years. Here is Rob McNichol's...
On April 24th 2004, it all came together.
For the first time since a major revamp Home Park, Plymouth, was full. The reason was that Division Two leaders, and the most beautiful, bewildering and infuriating part of my life, Plymouth Argyle were hosting Queens Park Rangers, second in said league and pushing for promotion too.
This was the third last game of the season, and the upshot of a home victory over our closest divisional rivals would mean promotion and the league title all in one glorious afternoon.
Just to add to the drama, Bobby Williamson was taking charge of his first game for the Pilgrims, having been appointed manager just days before. Paul Sturrock, architect of our rise from obscurity to the second tier of English football, had departed for Southampton a little earlier in the season, and Williamson had since stepped into those Scottish brogues.
The game featured an extra sense of intrigue for me, since my uncle just happened to be assistant manager of QPR. His sons, my cousins, have grown up Argyle fans thanks to me, so you can imagine their utter confusion at the situation for them that season.
The day of the game dawned sunny and warm, and it was quite something to take up my usual position on the Mayflower terracing over half an hour before the game feeling like a sardine - albeit a sardine with a green shirt and sunglasses.
The QPR game kicked off. A tense, nervous game, hardly a classic, brilliantly marshalled by Paul Durkin (I've got to mention the ref somewhere) was still 0-0 with ten minutes remaining.
Then it happened.
David Norris' left footed centre eluded Clarke Carlisle and met the forehead of Mickey Evans perfectly. The net rippled, the ground erupted. 1-0. Just a couple of minutes later David Friio found himself free and clean through. A clip over Lee Camp in the R's goal and it was Game, Set, Match, Promotion and Championship to Argyle.
I remember little about the game. I remember the goals, but then I've got them on DVD and watch them somewhat frequently. What I remember is the aftermath of the game.
It's not the trite playing of Queen's We Are the Champions or the customary lap of honour, either. I recall shaking hands with all around me before embracing the man who had been taking me to Argyle since the age of nine. We then left the ground, and began the happy walk to car. I noticed one or two people looking at me oddly, and then this was franked by one of the group of us traversing Home Park.
"Rob, what's up with your glasses?" Came the enquiry. I took them off and inspected them. It turned out I had just one lens in my lovely sunglasses. I have no idea when I jettisoned the other one, but the point is that I did not realise my glasses only had one lens because I had been crying. Yep, crying. But I was not embarrassed a single bit.
As we rounded the corner at the Devonport End, the area was teeming with Blue and White. QPR fans, everywhere, having left the ground sometime earlier than us, choosing to head to their coaches rather than watch us celebrate like looneys at their expense.
Part of me expected hostility. Maybe not physically, but at least verbally. Another part of me thought they'd ignore us. They didn't. What they did, almost to a man, was extend their hands and congratulate us on our promotion. All the way back through the picturesque surroundings of Argyle's ground, men in hooped shirts wished us well. All were gutted, but all were magnanimous. It was the classiest gesture I have ever seen in football.
And the best day I've experienced in football, without a shadow of a doubt.
Rob McNichol
www.football365.com/story/0,17033,13320_5790060,00.html
Football 365
F365 Memories: Tears, Shades & Rangers
Posted 20/12/09 19:16EmailPrintSave
To celebrate the end of the decade, Football365's finest have been gazing back through time to recall their most memorable moment of the last ten years. Here is Rob McNichol's...
On April 24th 2004, it all came together.
For the first time since a major revamp Home Park, Plymouth, was full. The reason was that Division Two leaders, and the most beautiful, bewildering and infuriating part of my life, Plymouth Argyle were hosting Queens Park Rangers, second in said league and pushing for promotion too.
This was the third last game of the season, and the upshot of a home victory over our closest divisional rivals would mean promotion and the league title all in one glorious afternoon.
Just to add to the drama, Bobby Williamson was taking charge of his first game for the Pilgrims, having been appointed manager just days before. Paul Sturrock, architect of our rise from obscurity to the second tier of English football, had departed for Southampton a little earlier in the season, and Williamson had since stepped into those Scottish brogues.
The game featured an extra sense of intrigue for me, since my uncle just happened to be assistant manager of QPR. His sons, my cousins, have grown up Argyle fans thanks to me, so you can imagine their utter confusion at the situation for them that season.
The day of the game dawned sunny and warm, and it was quite something to take up my usual position on the Mayflower terracing over half an hour before the game feeling like a sardine - albeit a sardine with a green shirt and sunglasses.
The QPR game kicked off. A tense, nervous game, hardly a classic, brilliantly marshalled by Paul Durkin (I've got to mention the ref somewhere) was still 0-0 with ten minutes remaining.
Then it happened.
David Norris' left footed centre eluded Clarke Carlisle and met the forehead of Mickey Evans perfectly. The net rippled, the ground erupted. 1-0. Just a couple of minutes later David Friio found himself free and clean through. A clip over Lee Camp in the R's goal and it was Game, Set, Match, Promotion and Championship to Argyle.
I remember little about the game. I remember the goals, but then I've got them on DVD and watch them somewhat frequently. What I remember is the aftermath of the game.
It's not the trite playing of Queen's We Are the Champions or the customary lap of honour, either. I recall shaking hands with all around me before embracing the man who had been taking me to Argyle since the age of nine. We then left the ground, and began the happy walk to car. I noticed one or two people looking at me oddly, and then this was franked by one of the group of us traversing Home Park.
"Rob, what's up with your glasses?" Came the enquiry. I took them off and inspected them. It turned out I had just one lens in my lovely sunglasses. I have no idea when I jettisoned the other one, but the point is that I did not realise my glasses only had one lens because I had been crying. Yep, crying. But I was not embarrassed a single bit.
As we rounded the corner at the Devonport End, the area was teeming with Blue and White. QPR fans, everywhere, having left the ground sometime earlier than us, choosing to head to their coaches rather than watch us celebrate like looneys at their expense.
Part of me expected hostility. Maybe not physically, but at least verbally. Another part of me thought they'd ignore us. They didn't. What they did, almost to a man, was extend their hands and congratulate us on our promotion. All the way back through the picturesque surroundings of Argyle's ground, men in hooped shirts wished us well. All were gutted, but all were magnanimous. It was the classiest gesture I have ever seen in football.
And the best day I've experienced in football, without a shadow of a doubt.
Rob McNichol
www.football365.com/story/0,17033,13320_5790060,00.html
Good to read though, 
