Here is a short story about AKUTRS, Sheffield, QPR, the Simod Cup and my daughter Laura.
I grew up in Huddersfield and am a born and bred Yorkshireman but I was never that keen on football until I lived and worked in London in 1981 and a couple of the lads I worked with were QPR fans and persuaded me to come to a game with them. I was very reluctant because I was worried that it would be the sort of bloodbath that seemed to happen every week at games in those days but as it happened we had a few beers and went round the corner to see Rangers beat Cardiff 2-0. This was in February 1981 and the next season I took out a season ticket which cost me about £35 for 21 matches.
I kept that season ticket (in the Loft of course) for the next four seasons and saw some great games and have many great memories. They used to do demonstrations of the Metropolitan Police Dog Team at half time and invariably one of the dogs would knock over a flaming hoop and there would be a big burnt black ring on the astroturf looking like something from a horror film. My favourite player then was the mighty Simon Stainrod; not just because he was a Northerner but mainly because he just never gave up and chased everything. In those days I went to nearly all of the away games on the charter trains that Daphne Biggs used to organise and I have kept a little folder of tickets with small dogs stamped on them. If you know you know.
Anyway in the autumn of 1986 I moved back up north to the beautiful city of Sheffield where I have lived ever since and on the night of February 1st 1989 I got the bus over to Hillsborough to see Rangers play Sheffield Wednesday in the Simod Cup. I don’t think anyone ever found out what a Simod was or what it did.
Outside the massively empty away end was this scruffy individual selling QPR fanzines and since I was heavily involved with the Football Supporters Association in those days and a big supporter of fanzines to get our message out I went and said hello. It turned out that Dave had made his way to Hillsborough but hadn’t got enough money to get in to the match – probably about £2.50 in those days – and I hadn’t got enough to pay for him. So the only way he could get in was if he sold enough fanzines but the problem was that there weren’t enough QPR fans there to buy any. We decided to go down to the other end and sell some to the Wednesday fans and problem solved – we were in ! I have been bumping into him at various Grim Up North away grounds like Stockport, Oldham, Stoke, Sheffield, Leeds, Doncaster etc ever since.
In 2006 – after a poor 0-3 away defeat at Crystal Palace that we went down to London for – I found out that I was going to be a dad.
Laura Chloe was born on 29th November and on the Saturday Rangers lost 3-0 away at Palace to celebrate her arrival. I did what any sensible dad would do and registered Laura as a Junior R and sent the form off the day we came back from the Childrens Hospital. I got a call a few days later saying that I didn’t need to send the £20 because she was only 3 days old but I said they should keep the money because they needed it more than I did; these being the days before the silly money turned up.
So each week I would tell Laura stories about QPR and keep her up to date with all the results and she would go to sleep at night with her growing collection of Rangers animals. However this isn’t a story with a happy ending because when she was 19 weeks old in April 2007 little Laura was taken ill and diagnosed with Acute Myeloid Leukaemia and she died on Sunday April 15th 2007. It all happened very quickly and has shocked everyone around our family ever since. I am now the vice-chair and a Trustee of a fabulous charity at the Childrens Hospital in Sheffield where we help kids and families from all over Yorkshire and Humberside who are on long treatments of chemotherapy or radiotherapy. The outcome isn’t always successful for some of the kids but we try to help in any way we can regardless of that.
I wanted to tell this story because I wanted to use AKUTRs as a way to share my long passion for QPR with a personal story about Laura. There was a great piece on the Guardian website last year about going to games with your dad or being a dad taking your kids for the first time and although it isn’t there now to link to it there were quite a few people in my position who had never been able to take their kids to a game and perhaps there are some reading this as well.
Last updated 24/01/2026