Queens Park Rangers vs Reading

HOOPS
Columnist
‘R’ GENERATION WRITER BEN SUMMER SHARES
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our thousand, and you could hear every
single one of us from miles away.
There’s something poetic about an away day.
They don’t really make sense on paper. Spending
all our cash on a train to god-knows-where to
stand up for two hours in the cold, with the bestcase
scenario – no guarantee, mind – that we
see our football team win a match.
My away journeys are rarer than I’d like, and they
don’t start as some other people’s do. There’s
no crate of beer, no group of mates (there aren’t
many of us travelling to Coventry from Cardiff!).
The day starts as a relatively sedate affair.
Then, slowly, the away day starts ticking, and
signs of life appear. It’s usually not a QPR scarf
(the other day it was actually Bristol Rovers). Oh
look, there’s someone else going to an away
game! They’re a part of the same bizarre routine
that I am! That’s fun!
Then another (Wimbledon). Then another
(Aston Villa). Then another (Swindon). Like in a
sci-fi film, when the camera pans out to reveal
a wider, more glorious landscape than the
initial shot suggested, you realise you’re part of
this great sprawling machine of club football.
Thousands of people going to hundreds of
places on millions of (delayed) trains. Challenge
any of them to explain why, and the explanation
wouldn’t sound like something any sensible
human would willingly do.
But what was the trip to Coventry, if not a
reminder of EXACTLY what it’s all about?
All the clichés, every damn one of them. Hearing
the roar of a packed away end echoing across
the stadium, folding back in on itself, completely
enveloping you. Watching a goal go in, and
grabbing fistfuls of scarves and arms and coats
and leaping and yelling and losing your voice and
yelling some more.
Being rewarded, so thoroughly, for our
travels. People talk about how Warburton has
reconnected the team with the fans. It’s true. It
would still be true if we weren’t winning games.
People wouldn’t be saying it if we weren’t winning
games. People are fickle, and I include myself in
that. We’re exceedingly lucky that things, even if
just for now, are going as well as they are.
But in those moments, when I was stood next to
Sam Taylor, founder of the ‘R’ Generation site,
who I’d known for nearly two years online but
only met in person that day, with his dad and his
friend, and then Adomah scored, it felt like we
were destined to win that game, and we were
destined to win every other game in the future
until the universe eventually ceases to exist.
The decision to go to Coventry suddenly made
perfect sense.
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