As Bad As It Got: Queens Park Rangers and White City

A crowd of 3,245 watched Queens Park Rangers lose 3-1 at home to Coventry City. It was the end of the 1962-63 season, a dispiriting campaign that saw the club finish 13th in the Third Division, their lowest position in four years under manager Alec Stock. More significantly, it was their last match at White City Stadium. The experiment, for the second time, was over.

The decision to leave Loftus Road had been made on the advice of Stock himself, who envisioned a future where a major west London club, perhaps sharing with Brentford or Fulham, could thrive in the 70,000-capacity venue. The club promoted the move with talk of “Ritz style soccer”, offering fine dining with a view of the pitch. But the familiar problems that plagued their first spell there thirty years earlier returned immediately. Fans were scattered and distant from the pitch, lost in a vast, empty bowl built for athletics and greyhound racing. The atmosphere was non-existent.

A brutal winter decimated the football calendar in early 1963, and crowds plummeted. The average attendance for the season fell by 10% to just 10,041. After less than a year, Rangers retreated to Loftus Road. Once again, the pursuit of a grander home had proven a costly mistake.

The Great Adventure

The first move, in 1931, was born of similar ambition mixed with economic desperation. With the Great Depression biting, the club’s directors saw the magnificent White City Stadium, just a few hundred yards away, as a solution to falling attendances and the high cost of redeveloping Loftus Road. The Greyhound Racing Association (GRA), which had bought the stadium in 1927, was adding events from speedway to boxing and was happy to accommodate Third Division South football.

The club programme for the first match, against Bournemouth & Boscombe Athletic on 5 September 1931, hailed “THE GREAT ADVENTURE”.

Here we are in the unique position of being able to offer a seat, under cover, for the ordinary admission price of one shilling. That surely is a step in the right direction… Our new ground - of which by the way a long lease has been taken - can probably accommodate over 100,000 in comfort, with 80,000 under cover.

Hopes for an opening day crowd of 40,000 were dashed when just under 19,000 turned up. Attendances held up reasonably well in the first season, averaging 13,303, the third-highest in the regional third tiers. A club record 41,000 saw an FA Cup victory against Leeds United. But on the pitch, the team slid to 13th. The following season, they slipped again to 16th place and the average crowd collapsed to 7,707. The move had incurred losses of £7,000, a huge sum for the time. The club’s total debts ballooned to £35,000, forcing the directors to ask players to defer their wages.

The GRA found new tenants in the form of a struggling rugby league side, Wigan Highfield, who were relocated and rebranded as London Highfield. They lasted only one season before the GRA abandoned its loss-making football and rugby experiments.

Back to the Bush

QPR returned to Loftus Road for the 1933-34 season, fortunate that their old ground had not been sold. The programme editor offered a frank assessment of the failed venture, noting that the stadium’s deserted appearance created a “depressing” atmosphere when not even a tenth full. He revealed the directors had found it “very difficult to carry on the club for the last few months of last season” and that only the generosity of the chairman, C. W. Fielding, had prevented it from closing down.

Back at their spiritual home, the club recovered. They won their first seven home games and spent the rest of the decade challenging for promotion. After the war, in 1948, they finally reached the Second Division and purchased the freehold of Loftus Road for £26,250, financed by a share issue.

The move to White City was not the club’s worst financial crisis, nor did it coincide with their lowest league finish. But it represents a fundamental miscalculation of what makes a football club. It was based on the fallacy that a large stadium, in and of itself, creates a large club. Both times, QPR learned that facilities are no substitute for identity. The stadium, despite its proximity, was alienating and ill-suited for football. It hosted a 1966 World Cup match between France and Uruguay, moved from Wembley because of a clash with a greyhound meeting, but it was never truly a football ground.

It was demolished in 1985. Queens Park Rangers, despite periodic talk of another move, remain at Loftus Road, the home they first occupied 103 years ago.