The Lads went to Shepherd's Bush with the memories of the glorious win seven months ago still fresh in their minds, and basically repeated the trick as we came from behind to claim all three points with goals from Clarke, Ballard, and Ba.
The day was off to a good start when, after I'd waited nervously in the pre-dawn wolflight of a mizzly damp of the temporary bus stop on Tenters Street, I breathed a relieved cloud into the air when the bus turned up, meaning that, barring mechanical failure or ambush by the natives of Spennymoor, arrival at Durham station for the 07:08 to that London was guaranteed.
An uneventful journey ended just before ten with King's Cross echoing to the sound of Ha'way the Lads as we met up with the other five of the Durham bus regulars and the not-so-magnificent seven headed for fun in the sun in Hammersmith. Thanks to Ron's bonus Oyster cards, discovered in the mystery drawer, it was a free tube ride. Once in the William Morris, we learned that Sunderland townies are known in certain places as cheese eaters. Every day’s a school day.
Anyhow, The William Morris filled up with Mackems, QPRs, and those in town for Fulham v Luton as we scared the locals with full-volume pitmatic. They couldn't understand a word, but it certainly worried them as they tried to work out which country we were from.
In our pink and purple away gear we lined up facing the other end as we took up our usual precarious position up aheight with Patto down below.
Patterson
Hume Ballard O'Nien Huggins
Neil Ekwah
Ba Bellingham Clarke
Burstow
...and a bench of Bishop, Hemir, Pricthard, Aouchiche, Seelt, Triantis, Rigg, Bennette, and Roberts.
Obviously, it was a worry to hear of Cirkin’s unavailability, but ;uckily, or rather, cleverly, we had Huggins to slot straight in. We also had a proper centre forward in new boy Burstow, so we were interested to see how we’d cope when we had a real target to play to.
As expected, we dominated the early possession but the Hoops defended well to deny us space at the sharp end. Perhaps Burstow lives locally – they certainly decided to keep tight on him so that there was never really a chance to tee him up, but we stayed patient, which proved the key. Gareth Ainsworth seemed to have brought his Wycombe tactics with him – goodness know, after last season’s showing QPR needed to try something – of “if it’s not in a home shirt, kick it” and it did succeed in breaking up our play. When we didn’t properly deal with a long throw (when did we ever?) the ball found its way to the edge of the box and a low shot went across Patto and just beyond his left fingertips to nestle just inside the post. Hardly deserved, but it was a shot and it was on target. That wasn't in the script.
If that wasn’t bad enough, only two minutes later Ekwah needed treatment and was pretty quickly subbed in favour of Pritchard, which obviously changed the shape of the game. Thankfully, it was for the better, but with the home side sticking to their clogging tactics, it was no real surprise and a real source of joy when Colback, who’d been on the end of a fair bit of abuse from the off, flew in high on Jobe and was straight off. What was he thinking? I reckon his dad would have sent him off for that. Obviously, that was the signal for us to relax and play the patient game. We’d already shown superior passing, but now we could let the ball do even more of the work. We thought we were back in it a few minutes later when Pricth’s cross was nodded in by Jobe, but the linesman’s flag quickly ended our celebrations. Somehow, we couldn’t find a way through until we were deep in the time added for the treatment of Ekwah and Bellingham without levelling, but then up stepped Clarke. QPR knew fine well what he was going to do when he cut in from the left after taking a clever pass from Huggins. His low right footed shot took a satisfying pinball off a defending shin and left Begovic with no chance and had us in the upper tier precariously close to tumbling out of the stand in celebration.
With the hosts a man down, Mowbray decided we could go for it and replaced Huggins with Roberts, and little Pat quickly set about dancing across the pitch behind Burstow and linking up with Pritch, who’d established himself as the main man. He was pulling strings and dictating play, moving the ball left and right with the home defence looking increasingly fraught. Ballard went close from a corner after only a few minutes, and Ba showed that his improvement was continuing when he showed great movement to find space for a shot – but Begovic was up to it. Following a corner, the ball came to Pritch and fired in a low shot that Begovic saved, but he only succeeded in pushing the ball across the area to where Ballard was lurking unmarked, and big Dan gleefully planted it into the empty net to cause more ructions in the away end. No more than we deserved.
A few minutes after that we replaced Burstow with Aouchiche (forgive me if it just call him Adil from now on) to give another new boy a chance to impress, and he didn’t let us down as he carried the ball past opponents with ease as we probed for the settler. Not that the result wasn’t in doubt from the moment Ballard scored, but football’s a funny old game, we are Sunderland, and it only takes a moment to score a goal. Ba smacked one off the post as we in the seat went into singing overdrive, then Patto had to be on his toes, or rather his knees, a couple of times to ensure that didn’t happen at our end but when the third came it was no surprise. After Jobe had seen his effort well saved, Adil played a lovely cross from our left to the inrushing Ba, and he hit an absolute beaut into the roof of the net with the keeper barely having time to blink. Ten to go, game over, mad celebrations amongst the 3,000 visitors.
On came Hemir for Belliingham and we could use the big man as a target to soak up the play and deny QPR any sort of chance of building a break. He came close to grabbing his first league goal, but it was not to be and we had to “make do” with 3-1. Honestly, I love going to QPR as it’s been such a happy hunting ground of late. A well-deserved win built on patience which let the quality shine through. Ba’s progress continues, Adil looks like the real deal, and if we can afford to start without players as good as Pricth and Roberst, we’re in a good place. Oh, and nobody got booked.
Man of the Match? Jobe glided about as he does, O’Nien (previously unmentioned simply because he organised this defensive marras so well that he had little to do) was his usual enthusiastic self, and Clarke did what Clarke does. However, little Alex was the man who kept us ticking after his unscheduled early appearance from the bench and shows that we have the versatility in our squad that allows Mowbray to change tactics. Pritch for me.
