QPR FC: Belonging
Article by Joanne Connolly
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I grew up in the shadow of the floodlights of Loftus Road and had always secretly yearned to go to the games but in those dark, unenlightened days, girls were not considered of a suitable propensity to be taken along- even a Tomboy like myself who spent my childhood in Wormholt Park playing football, climbing trees and fighting boys, was passed over by my elder brother Jeremy when he embarked on the initiation of my brothers Simon and Matthew into the family tradition of supporting the Rangers. My little brother Jamie who was my sibling shadow throughout our childhood had cried and cried to my mum to be allowed to go along too [ he is now a grown man and after a lifetime of supporting Rangers he still often cries and cries NOT to go! ] but, at 8 years old she thought him too young and sensitive to be taken to such an unruly place of tribal gatherings and archaic incomprehensible rules [she never quite got the hang of football being a West Ham fan…] Finally she agreed to let him go with the proviso that his big sister Joanne went along too.
So it was with barely suppressed excitement that I agreed to be his chaperone and to become Jeremy’s Second-in Command on that momentous day in August 1977. From a child of the earliest age Jeremy was my protector [not just mine but all his younger siblings] If ever somebody was bothering us-a bigger, older kid for example, it was Jeremy we would go to for protection and succour and how proud I was to be going to football with the brother I,d always looked up to and now, in a way, we were equals ,united in the bond we shared- going to see the Queens Park Rangers!!! I had always listened in fascination to Jeremy’s stories of the matches and his exploits as a Loft Boy in the late 60s and early 70s- He was a Mucker of Mick Ellicott- the legendary Loftus Road pugilist and renownedly rumbustious Rangers Boy!!! He told me he went up to Nottingham Forest with Ellicott and a few others. They got into the Forest End and were separated from the other Loft Boys- finding themselves surrounded, Ellicott went berserk and started seeing off all-comers: of course Jeremy and the others had to stand by their mate! Feet were flying, fisticuffs followed and the Forest turned tail and fled!!! Our own particular piece of Rangers family folklore was that in the middle 1960s Jeremy had “somehow” come by a workman’s helmet that was worn by the builders constructing the Westway- my Dad painted it white and emblazoned Q P R in large blue letters across the front- apparently this was in vogue amongst the embryonic hooligans of the Loftus Road Boys Pen. Jeremy wore it with aplomb and was featured in a photo of the crowd in “The West London Observer”. He threw himself into the life of a Loft Boy with gusto-he would come home from matches and teach us the latest chants including ”The Red Red Robin” a Loft anthem which was identical to the original version in all but the last [additional] line!!!! I also enjoyed Jeremy’s version of the radio show theme tune “Sing Something Simple” which was not quite as cosy as its forebear and directed at opposing fans!!!! Conversely Jeremy never taught us the “Jeremy Bear” chant which was a popular late 60s/ early 70s terrace chant and concentrated on contemporary Skinhead references [Jeremy Bear was the name of a character advertising Sugar Puffs cereal at the time ] The full lyrics of which were:
If you go down to the Loft today, you,re in for a big surprise. If you go down to the Loft today, you,ll never believe your eyes. For Jeremy the Sugar Puff Bear has got some boots and cropped his hair. Today the day that Jeremy became a Skinhead!!!!!
I never heard him sing it once and only learnt of it through a friend who is a similar age to Jeremy. This does not surprise me as he never really liked his name , preferring to be called Jerry or Jel [particularly at Rangers] and to be honest he couldn’t have been less of a “Jeremy” It is funny though that my brother who would never have been known as modest would pass up on the opportunity to be immortalised in song!!!He probably wouldn’t have minded being celebrated as a Skinhead [although I think he was only ever a Suedehead; by my recollections ] but certainly not by the sobriquet “Jeremy Bear”!!! We would call him Jeremy Bear, but out of earshot ,as he could be warlike when the mood took him, although always a loving brother to us all.
I knew also of the ephemeral euphoria he experienced when we were crowned Champions of the First Division for those glorious 10 days in the early summer of 76 and the pride he felt that Rangers had got to the Quarter-Finals of the EUFA Cup the next season, in some style- the wondrous Stanley Bowles breaking Denis Law’s British goal scoring record in a European competition, netting 11 in total. I longed to be able to share in such occasions and not just vicariously; but to see that mythical team in reality.
Finally I had my chance!!! Prior to leaving we had to perform the first ritual of the Saturday- We lived on the Wormholt Estate, very near to the ground and my Dad was normally still out plying his trade as a Taxi Driver at the time the cars began arriving for the match early on a Saturday afternoon, thus we were habitually instructed by him to perform the essential operation of cordoning off his parking space outside our house: which usually consisted of placing two heavy objects on the ground at each end of the space: with a broomstick or other long piece of wood that we had to hand, balancing this on top of said objects like a makeshift fence. Once this operation was completed we were ready to leave but not before my mum had entreated me on pain of death not to let Jamie out of my sight and her most important stipulation to Jeremy was that we should not be allowed to purchase or eat anything from the Burger vans dotted along the roads around the ground “You never know what they’ve put in those burgers!!” was her sagacious [and most prescient] summing up!!! Plus ca change!! Such a situation would not arise nowadays? Perhaps the boss of Westlers branched out and won the contract to supply present-day Tescos????
With my mum’s words of warning ringing in my ears, for the first time I became part of the blue and white hooped human throng that streamed past our house on the way to the ground. Jamie was decked out in his replica Rangers kit [ bought from Ron Springetts sports shop on the Uxbridge Road] and I had a brand new blue and white bar scarf!!! How happy we were on that first day, filled with anticipation at our imminent immersion into the unknown mysteries of the religious experience that was a visit to the holy ground of Loftus Road!!!! Jeremy had long ago left his Loft Boy days behind and now elected to stand on the School End, which, by this time had become the designated “Away” End but still contained a considerable congregation of Rangers fans who all knew each other and accepted us fledgling fans without question! We would enter the ground via a door in a large steel-panelled gate- Jeremy, of course , knew the Steward and would give him 50p for the three of us [enabling Jeremy to have enough left over for a fish and chip supper and a taxi home if he had ever fancied such fare and been idle enough not to countenance the 5 minutes walk back home through the backstreets of the Wormholt Estate! ] I knew from the moment I walked up the steps of the School End and gazed upon the Loft in all its resplendent glory and beheld the vision that was the sea of blue and white scarves; that I belonged and this was to be my spiritual home from that day onwards. I fell in love for the first time that day: with the ground, the fans and most of all the team- it had been my Dad’s team, my brothers’ and now it was mine!!!!
Jeremy directed Jamie and I to go and stand near the front of the terrace as we were both of a very small persuasion in those days, but for the second half we would adjourn to the back corner of the stand where a kiosk, open at half-time , had now been battened down and we would sit on top of it and be afforded a Grandstand view for the rest of the game!!! I loved everything about it- the proximity to the teams, the end to end singing- one of my favourite chants of those days was “Q…P…R…!!! “ which seems to have been lost in the mists of time. I soon got to learn Jeremy’s ritual on kick-off of throwing back his head, puffing his chest out whilst taking a deep breath, exhaling and shouting “COME ON YOU RS!!!” as loud as he possibly could! Jeremy’s group of mates were of various ages- his friend Steve [nicknamed Honey Monster because of his prodigious size] an older friend Pete, who came with his teenage son Andy and his friend Richard. Between them was the age-old classic banter- I remember once Andy was dressed completely in Rangers-related attire- Rangers T-shirt, Rangers jacket, Rangers scarves and even, as he proudly showed us, a Rangers belt- Jeremy laughed and said-“ I bet you’ve got blue and white hooped pants on as well??!!!” And Andy replied- “Now you mention it…..” I averted my eyes so will never know if he did or not!!! Another time it rained relentlessly throughout the game and having been soaked through because they were not wearing coats Jeremy and Steve decided to take their saturated shirts off and hang them over a wire which stretched across the back of the School End [to dry!] And the Geordies think they invented taking off their shirts in adverse conditions at a football match!!!!
Some of the others who stood next to us were former Loft Boys too and I remember more than once a portly little man with pebble glasses who I took to be a Steward hurrying past us along the pitch, he wore an overlarge coat which dwarfed him and being too long for his little legs gave him the appearance of a clockwork toy as he scuttled by. Whenever he passed Jeremy and some of his mates would shout “Gooch!!!” and everyone would laugh and somehow I formed the impression that this was a term of slight derision and I used that word for years thinking that Jeremy and his mates had introduced me to their own particular vernacular. I later learnt of Mr Gooch and his eccentric ways and that he was a character to be celebrated in the same way that Jeremy’s time as a Loft Boy with Mick Ellicott should be lauded as part of Rangers folklore.
Once initiated into the rites and rituals of the Rangers and after that first time my heart had been irretrievably lost to the blue and white hoops- I attended every home game and many away games with my big brother. However at times , Jeremy’s training in the Loftus Road school of hard knocks would be brought home to me: I recall going to a Cup game on a Tuesday evening in 78 against Nottingham Forest and Rangers were winning 1-0 until the depths of injury-time when Forest equalised almost on the final whistle. We were in the Loft [ we always used to stand in the Loft for the night games] and as we walked out I felt distraught and could not contain myself as the tears started flowing. Jeremy looked at me in horror and hissed “Stop that for f***’s sake, you are showing me up!!!” Perhaps the fact that he was standing on his old stomping ground rendered him contemptuous of my show of emotion? If I,d been letting fly in the direction of the Forest fans [as he had done all those years before!] perhaps he would have been more supportive of me?!!! The piece of music “The Pied Piper” was regularly played over the tannoy before night games and whenever I hear it now I can feel the floodlights lighting up the skies of Shepherds Bush and experience again the expectation and enthusiasm that I felt for my team as we raced towards the ground from our other pre-match place of pilgrimage- The Vic [Princess Victoria pub on the Uxbridge Road] It was Jeremy’s local and where we would meet him before night games and on Saturday lunchtime after he had finished his window-cleaning round and before going to the game- the song “Breaking Glass” by Nick Lowe was played incessantly on the jukebox and always evokes memories of that rowdy, slightly anarchic place where anything went really as the then landlord was hand in glove with Shepherds Bush “nick” and “F” Division’s finest could often be seen drinking in there at all hours. I would stand looking on as Jeremy would take on any willing adversary at pool and win- in his case his prowess at pool was certainly an indicator of a misspent youth but no matter, he loved the pub as he loved his Rangers and besides he was young . When he finally settled into a career it was an extraordinary one- starting at the BBC Ealing Studios as a Storeman and ending up as a Grip/ Electrician in the tv and film industry and garnering credits on films such as Ken Russell’s “Gothic” and working with assorted luminaries such as Tom Cruise- all of which he took in his stride- not for him the notion of being starstruck- he reserved that for his true heroes : Rodney and Stanley. They were my heroes too as was Jeremy and he always will be. I look back on those days with much love and gratitude to my brothers for setting me forth on my lifelong path as a Rangers fan and although like life, it has not always been easy, I wouldn’t have it any other way. My beloved brother Jeremy passed away suddenly in September 2011 and although I will never stop missing him and the sadness I feel that he is gone will never leave me, whenever I go to Loftus Road, I remember those wonderful days and think of my brother and hope that he is looking down on me and our team and smiling.
This article is dedicated to the memory of Jeremy Connolly R.I.P. [ 1st June 1955-22ndSeptember 2011 ]
Beloved brother, loving father and grandfather, original Loft Boy and lifelong Rangers supporter.
© e-Football 2015 All rights reserved no part of this document or this website may be reproduced without consent of e-Football
Subscribe to the e-Football Podcast on iTunes (Click Here)
I grew up in the shadow of the floodlights of Loftus Road and had always secretly yearned to go to the games but in those dark, unenlightened days, girls were not considered of a suitable propensity to be taken along- even a Tomboy like myself who spent my childhood in Wormholt Park playing football, climbing trees and fighting boys, was passed over by my elder brother Jeremy when he embarked on the initiation of my brothers Simon and Matthew into the family tradition of supporting the Rangers. My little brother Jamie who was my sibling shadow throughout our childhood had cried and cried to my mum to be allowed to go along too [ he is now a grown man and after a lifetime of supporting Rangers he still often cries and cries NOT to go! ] but, at 8 years old she thought him too young and sensitive to be taken to such an unruly place of tribal gatherings and archaic incomprehensible rules [she never quite got the hang of football being a West Ham fan…] Finally she agreed to let him go with the proviso that his big sister Joanne went along too.
So it was with barely suppressed excitement that I agreed to be his chaperone and to become Jeremy’s Second-in Command on that momentous day in August 1977. From a child of the earliest age Jeremy was my protector [not just mine but all his younger siblings] If ever somebody was bothering us-a bigger, older kid for example, it was Jeremy we would go to for protection and succour and how proud I was to be going to football with the brother I,d always looked up to and now, in a way, we were equals ,united in the bond we shared- going to see the Queens Park Rangers!!! I had always listened in fascination to Jeremy’s stories of the matches and his exploits as a Loft Boy in the late 60s and early 70s- He was a Mucker of Mick Ellicott- the legendary Loftus Road pugilist and renownedly rumbustious Rangers Boy!!! He told me he went up to Nottingham Forest with Ellicott and a few others. They got into the Forest End and were separated from the other Loft Boys- finding themselves surrounded, Ellicott went berserk and started seeing off all-comers: of course Jeremy and the others had to stand by their mate! Feet were flying, fisticuffs followed and the Forest turned tail and fled!!! Our own particular piece of Rangers family folklore was that in the middle 1960s Jeremy had “somehow” come by a workman’s helmet that was worn by the builders constructing the Westway- my Dad painted it white and emblazoned Q P R in large blue letters across the front- apparently this was in vogue amongst the embryonic hooligans of the Loftus Road Boys Pen. Jeremy wore it with aplomb and was featured in a photo of the crowd in “The West London Observer”. He threw himself into the life of a Loft Boy with gusto-he would come home from matches and teach us the latest chants including ”The Red Red Robin” a Loft anthem which was identical to the original version in all but the last [additional] line!!!! I also enjoyed Jeremy’s version of the radio show theme tune “Sing Something Simple” which was not quite as cosy as its forebear and directed at opposing fans!!!! Conversely Jeremy never taught us the “Jeremy Bear” chant which was a popular late 60s/ early 70s terrace chant and concentrated on contemporary Skinhead references [Jeremy Bear was the name of a character advertising Sugar Puffs cereal at the time ] The full lyrics of which were:
If you go down to the Loft today, you,re in for a big surprise. If you go down to the Loft today, you,ll never believe your eyes. For Jeremy the Sugar Puff Bear has got some boots and cropped his hair. Today the day that Jeremy became a Skinhead!!!!!
I never heard him sing it once and only learnt of it through a friend who is a similar age to Jeremy. This does not surprise me as he never really liked his name , preferring to be called Jerry or Jel [particularly at Rangers] and to be honest he couldn’t have been less of a “Jeremy” It is funny though that my brother who would never have been known as modest would pass up on the opportunity to be immortalised in song!!!He probably wouldn’t have minded being celebrated as a Skinhead [although I think he was only ever a Suedehead; by my recollections ] but certainly not by the sobriquet “Jeremy Bear”!!! We would call him Jeremy Bear, but out of earshot ,as he could be warlike when the mood took him, although always a loving brother to us all.
I knew also of the ephemeral euphoria he experienced when we were crowned Champions of the First Division for those glorious 10 days in the early summer of 76 and the pride he felt that Rangers had got to the Quarter-Finals of the EUFA Cup the next season, in some style- the wondrous Stanley Bowles breaking Denis Law’s British goal scoring record in a European competition, netting 11 in total. I longed to be able to share in such occasions and not just vicariously; but to see that mythical team in reality.
Finally I had my chance!!! Prior to leaving we had to perform the first ritual of the Saturday- We lived on the Wormholt Estate, very near to the ground and my Dad was normally still out plying his trade as a Taxi Driver at the time the cars began arriving for the match early on a Saturday afternoon, thus we were habitually instructed by him to perform the essential operation of cordoning off his parking space outside our house: which usually consisted of placing two heavy objects on the ground at each end of the space: with a broomstick or other long piece of wood that we had to hand, balancing this on top of said objects like a makeshift fence. Once this operation was completed we were ready to leave but not before my mum had entreated me on pain of death not to let Jamie out of my sight and her most important stipulation to Jeremy was that we should not be allowed to purchase or eat anything from the Burger vans dotted along the roads around the ground “You never know what they’ve put in those burgers!!” was her sagacious [and most prescient] summing up!!! Plus ca change!! Such a situation would not arise nowadays? Perhaps the boss of Westlers branched out and won the contract to supply present-day Tescos????
With my mum’s words of warning ringing in my ears, for the first time I became part of the blue and white hooped human throng that streamed past our house on the way to the ground. Jamie was decked out in his replica Rangers kit [ bought from Ron Springetts sports shop on the Uxbridge Road] and I had a brand new blue and white bar scarf!!! How happy we were on that first day, filled with anticipation at our imminent immersion into the unknown mysteries of the religious experience that was a visit to the holy ground of Loftus Road!!!! Jeremy had long ago left his Loft Boy days behind and now elected to stand on the School End, which, by this time had become the designated “Away” End but still contained a considerable congregation of Rangers fans who all knew each other and accepted us fledgling fans without question! We would enter the ground via a door in a large steel-panelled gate- Jeremy, of course , knew the Steward and would give him 50p for the three of us [enabling Jeremy to have enough left over for a fish and chip supper and a taxi home if he had ever fancied such fare and been idle enough not to countenance the 5 minutes walk back home through the backstreets of the Wormholt Estate! ] I knew from the moment I walked up the steps of the School End and gazed upon the Loft in all its resplendent glory and beheld the vision that was the sea of blue and white scarves; that I belonged and this was to be my spiritual home from that day onwards. I fell in love for the first time that day: with the ground, the fans and most of all the team- it had been my Dad’s team, my brothers’ and now it was mine!!!!
Jeremy directed Jamie and I to go and stand near the front of the terrace as we were both of a very small persuasion in those days, but for the second half we would adjourn to the back corner of the stand where a kiosk, open at half-time , had now been battened down and we would sit on top of it and be afforded a Grandstand view for the rest of the game!!! I loved everything about it- the proximity to the teams, the end to end singing- one of my favourite chants of those days was “Q…P…R…!!! “ which seems to have been lost in the mists of time. I soon got to learn Jeremy’s ritual on kick-off of throwing back his head, puffing his chest out whilst taking a deep breath, exhaling and shouting “COME ON YOU RS!!!” as loud as he possibly could! Jeremy’s group of mates were of various ages- his friend Steve [nicknamed Honey Monster because of his prodigious size] an older friend Pete, who came with his teenage son Andy and his friend Richard. Between them was the age-old classic banter- I remember once Andy was dressed completely in Rangers-related attire- Rangers T-shirt, Rangers jacket, Rangers scarves and even, as he proudly showed us, a Rangers belt- Jeremy laughed and said-“ I bet you’ve got blue and white hooped pants on as well??!!!” And Andy replied- “Now you mention it…..” I averted my eyes so will never know if he did or not!!! Another time it rained relentlessly throughout the game and having been soaked through because they were not wearing coats Jeremy and Steve decided to take their saturated shirts off and hang them over a wire which stretched across the back of the School End [to dry!] And the Geordies think they invented taking off their shirts in adverse conditions at a football match!!!!
Some of the others who stood next to us were former Loft Boys too and I remember more than once a portly little man with pebble glasses who I took to be a Steward hurrying past us along the pitch, he wore an overlarge coat which dwarfed him and being too long for his little legs gave him the appearance of a clockwork toy as he scuttled by. Whenever he passed Jeremy and some of his mates would shout “Gooch!!!” and everyone would laugh and somehow I formed the impression that this was a term of slight derision and I used that word for years thinking that Jeremy and his mates had introduced me to their own particular vernacular. I later learnt of Mr Gooch and his eccentric ways and that he was a character to be celebrated in the same way that Jeremy’s time as a Loft Boy with Mick Ellicott should be lauded as part of Rangers folklore.
Once initiated into the rites and rituals of the Rangers and after that first time my heart had been irretrievably lost to the blue and white hoops- I attended every home game and many away games with my big brother. However at times , Jeremy’s training in the Loftus Road school of hard knocks would be brought home to me: I recall going to a Cup game on a Tuesday evening in 78 against Nottingham Forest and Rangers were winning 1-0 until the depths of injury-time when Forest equalised almost on the final whistle. We were in the Loft [ we always used to stand in the Loft for the night games] and as we walked out I felt distraught and could not contain myself as the tears started flowing. Jeremy looked at me in horror and hissed “Stop that for f***’s sake, you are showing me up!!!” Perhaps the fact that he was standing on his old stomping ground rendered him contemptuous of my show of emotion? If I,d been letting fly in the direction of the Forest fans [as he had done all those years before!] perhaps he would have been more supportive of me?!!! The piece of music “The Pied Piper” was regularly played over the tannoy before night games and whenever I hear it now I can feel the floodlights lighting up the skies of Shepherds Bush and experience again the expectation and enthusiasm that I felt for my team as we raced towards the ground from our other pre-match place of pilgrimage- The Vic [Princess Victoria pub on the Uxbridge Road] It was Jeremy’s local and where we would meet him before night games and on Saturday lunchtime after he had finished his window-cleaning round and before going to the game- the song “Breaking Glass” by Nick Lowe was played incessantly on the jukebox and always evokes memories of that rowdy, slightly anarchic place where anything went really as the then landlord was hand in glove with Shepherds Bush “nick” and “F” Division’s finest could often be seen drinking in there at all hours. I would stand looking on as Jeremy would take on any willing adversary at pool and win- in his case his prowess at pool was certainly an indicator of a misspent youth but no matter, he loved the pub as he loved his Rangers and besides he was young . When he finally settled into a career it was an extraordinary one- starting at the BBC Ealing Studios as a Storeman and ending up as a Grip/ Electrician in the tv and film industry and garnering credits on films such as Ken Russell’s “Gothic” and working with assorted luminaries such as Tom Cruise- all of which he took in his stride- not for him the notion of being starstruck- he reserved that for his true heroes : Rodney and Stanley. They were my heroes too as was Jeremy and he always will be. I look back on those days with much love and gratitude to my brothers for setting me forth on my lifelong path as a Rangers fan and although like life, it has not always been easy, I wouldn’t have it any other way. My beloved brother Jeremy passed away suddenly in September 2011 and although I will never stop missing him and the sadness I feel that he is gone will never leave me, whenever I go to Loftus Road, I remember those wonderful days and think of my brother and hope that he is looking down on me and our team and smiling.
This article is dedicated to the memory of Jeremy Connolly R.I.P. [ 1st June 1955-22ndSeptember 2011 ]
Beloved brother, loving father and grandfather, original Loft Boy and lifelong Rangers supporter.
© e-Football 2015 All rights reserved no part of this document or this website may be reproduced without consent of e-Football
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