Déjà vu in Plymouth...

Plymouth 1-1 QPR

In the first league away fixture of the season QPR travelled down to Devon for the second time in 5 days to take on today’s hosts Plymouth Argyle. Lee Brown describes how today’s unbelievable events unfold.

The day started very early today for the four of us travelling down to Plymouth. Lofty was the driver for the day taking Justin, Jointy and myself on a trip to the west country that not only had a sense of déjà vu about it but also a day that none of us will forget in a hurry, for both good and bad reasons.
The journey down was a nightmare from start to finish! After picking up both Justin and Jointy from home via Northolt and Hayes they hit traffic instantly on the M4 and this delayed the journey by half an hour straight away. Who would do roadworks on a Saturday?? Do these people not know that the motorways are usually full of excitable football fans travelling up and down the country to see their teams? At 10.30 they guys picked me up from Reading's stadium, where I had been dropped off so I could join the guys and enjoy the days 'entertainment' in good company.
After a smooth journey down the M4 we cut onto the M5 at Bristol and hit Nightmare Street. We were practically bumper to bumper for nearly an hour and a half, seeing thousands and this isn't an exaggeration, thousands of caravans! There were more caravans on the road up and down the M5 to fill all the caravan parks in this country. It was like a caravan cruise had been planned down the motorway. After spending ages stuck in this traffic we decided to let the sat nav take control and take us on a detour it planned for us. It took us through the little village town of Banwell and en route we came across a cathedral, castle, tractors, a scrap yard and believe it or not more caravans! After taking this detour we found that all we done had cut out one junction and were really no better off, although it did take 20 miles off our journey. As we continued to struggle on down the motorway we decided to play a little game between ourselves and predict all the scores from the Premiership, Championship, League 1 and League 2 fixtures. We would award 2 points for a correct score and 1 point for a right outcome. It was a £5 entry and made things slightly more interesting as we continued to go along at 10-20 mph. Finally we came to the source of the problem just past junction 25 on the M5, a burnt out car, I couldn't recognize the car as it was pretty crispy as we went past. Hopefully no-one was hurt in the process.
Once we got past this we started to fly. We needed to do 80 miles in just over 50 minutes and that was just to arrive 20 minutes after kick off. After some fantastic driving from Lewis Hamilton, sorry i mean Lofty, we arrived and parked at the ground at 3.05 and walked round the stadium to the away entrance before taking our seats only 12 minutes into the game.

Jim Magilton made 2 changes from last weekend’s league match against Blackpool, Buzsaky and Leigertwood coming in for Balanta and Rowlands through injuries in the previous game.
New Loan signing Tom Heaton from Man United took his place on the bench for his first game in a three month loan period. Welcome to Tom from all at Lofty Heights.



Having missed the first 10-15 minutes I really cannot comment on anything that happened so we shall bypass all to what we did witness.
As we entered the stand Rangers were awarded a free kick. Akos Buzsaky stepped up and struck a fierce drive which Larrieu got stung with but lead to no further danger.
It was a real battle of the defences with neither team really having a killer pass to thread through the defence and create any clear goal scoring opportunities.
The majority of the action was coming from the Grandstand where the Plymouth fans were. In the space of 10minutes 3 people got ejected from the ground for what looked like arguments being started between themselves. It really was quite unbelievable to see!
As the half reached the halfway point Rangers begun to hit a little bit of a groove and looked the more attacking side. Routledge attempted a 25yard effort which seemed to slide just wide of the Plymouth goal.
Rangers really were beginning to look the most threatening going forwards, Taarabt and Routledge were usually at the heart of us going forwards without really troubling Larrieu in the Plymouth goal.
As time went on we witnessed another 3 Plymouth fans get rejected from the stands. It really was quite strange how Plymouth fans were fighting within themselves!
With 5 minutes left of the first half and the game seemingly heading for 0-0 at half time, myself and Lofty headed downstairs for refreshments as the four of us had created quite a thirst and hunger in the long journey down. This is where the day got even worse!!
Whilst we were in the queue for food and drink we heard the Rangers fans erupt, a goal just when it seemed unlikely! Everyone downstairs were curious as to who the goal scorer was and we found out that it was Helguson, who to be fair was a spectator for most of the first half. Having seen the highlights i can now describe the goal.
Taarabt collected the ball and ventured down the left flank, cut in and looked to shoot from just outside the left side of the 18yard box, the shot hit the defenders boot and spun into the ground going towards goal and there was Helguson following up to nod home his first goal of the season. 1-0 Half time.

As we enjoyed the half time interval downstairs with the hard earned food and soft drinks we bumped into a few friendly faces in Paul 'the Elf', Nik, Sarah and Vikki that we haven't seen in a long while. We all managed to pick up on how vunerable we looked on the left side of defence and how Gorkss was pretty much playing in two different positions throughout the half as Borrowdale was slow to get back and wasn't playing his best game for Rangers this season. The Rangers defence really did look like it could absorb anything that was thrown at it, just the left side worried us.



The second half begun and we promptly took our seats and we hoped to not miss another vital piece of action all game.
In a fairly even opening 10 minutes it was Rangers that had the first major chance of the first half.
Taarabt cut in from his wide left role that he was occupying in the second period, swapping roles with Buzsaky, he found himself in the middle of the park just outside the 18yard box. He curled an effort that just whisked past the post into the side netting, very very close to being the second goal that Rangers needed.
On 60 minutes Helguson came off for Agyemang.
Again the game was played in midfield with both defences absorbing any attacks their opponents threw at them.
On 73 minutes Hogan Ephraim came on for the tiring Buzsaky. 4 minutes later Rowan vine came on for Taarabt.
Plymouth were slowly beginning to put the pressure on the Rangers defence in search of an equalizer. This left Plymouth open to a Rangers counter attack and we set upon looking for our first victory of the season.
With roughly five minutes of normal time left Vine was set free and run towards goal and only had the Plymouth keeper to beat. Rather than taking his chance early with the angle to goal more open Vine took the ball on into the 18 yard box and Larrieu was able to close the angle down, Vine tried placing his shot past the keeper but was denied by a good stop and wasted the opportunity to secure Rangers first victory at Plymouth since the 2002/2003 season.
As the game closed out and Plymouth putting more and more pressure on the Rangers defence we found that we had to survive five, yes five, minutes of injury time. How there was five minutes extra I struggle to believe, it was more like three after having just one major stoppage through injury.
Plymouth pressed for the elusive equalizer and nearly got it. A ball came in from the right hand side and caused all sorts of problems in the Rangers defence. After a bit of a scramble it was Gavin Mahon who cleared off the line and put the ball out for a throw in.
From the throw in a long ball was thrown into the box and once again the Rangers defence panicked and with Cerny being less than commanding and claiming the loose ball, it hit the unfortunate Gorkss to deflect into the net to gift Plymouth an equalizer that if I'm perfectly honest they definitely did not deserve.
Once again, for the second time in two years we were left cursing a last minute goal at Home Park. The game can be so cruel sometimes!
As we made our way out of the stadium we were met with the chants "1-0 and u messed it up(a slightly censored version)" and the funniest one of them all " You're just a small town in London!". Someone figure that one out as it confused us all and just made us laugh for quite a while.

Today’s Man of the Day is Lofty for driving the four of us down to Plymouth in difficult conditions and managing to remain calm enough to get us to the ground and only missing 10minutes of the game. A big thank you to him from all of us.

The Man of the Match as voted in the car by us all was - Wayne Routledge.


Once we got through all the funny chants we headed straight to the burger vans, where me and Lofty took the challenge of eating a Bellybuster. In this is a burger, jumbo sausage, bacon and cheese. (As pictured below)



We demolished them before grabbing a few sweet delights for the journey home. I do recommend the warm donuts, they went down a treat!

The journey home was a very smooth one and encountered no problems at all. We also found out our winner for the predictions and the chance to take home £15 more than expected. After all the games were ticked off the final scores were :-
4th- Jointy 19 points, 3rd- Lofty 21 points and we had a tie for first between myself and Justin for first place, both of us getting 26 points. After trying to find a winner by using the most amount of correct scores we were still tied on 6-6! Times got desperate so we had to predict the five results from the Scottish Third Division. After 3 games the scores were tied, as the 4th result got read out I took a 1 point lead with the deciding result to come..... Livingston beat Montrose 2-0, Justin predicted the 2-0 win...... Luckily so did I and collected the money.
A good end to what was a frustrating day of football but at the end of the day the four of us had a really good giggle through the day!