No one likes us? Do we care?

Steve Heard is a QPR fan who has recently started writing a blog about the trials and tribulations of the club and its supporters. In his latest piece, Steve opines that the Superhoops seem to have become a club that others love to hate - or at least love to mock. He reckons this is a recent development, QPR having previously been an outfit warmly and widely praised as a good club with decent supporters. Chances are, all of this will sound familiar to a lot of Steve's fellow Rangers fanatics.

Wondering why and how this might have happened, Steve flags up the recent Loftus Road involvement of three figures not universally admired in the game - Mark Hughes, Joey Barton and Neil Warnock. All three could have had their parts to play in QPR morphing from a club for whom many neutrals had a soft spot into one which attracts derision and bile. But perhaps it's also the case that the rapid injection of cash from wealthy owners (albeit perhaps not always wisely spent) has added a certain toxicity to the Rangers brand.

Whatever the case, it seems that a QPR relegation (which now looks very likely) will not be widely regretted by those who do not actively support the club.

At the last home match, a neutral observer was sitting among the home supporters in the lower tier of the School End. On hand to watch the draw against Everton was a fan of German side St. Pauli, resplendent in a hat and scarf in the distinctive colours of his favourite team. Players representing the Hamburg outfit, currently sitting in fourth place in the German league's second tier, ply their trade in a mainly brown kit. Readers with a long memory may recall Coventry City sporting brown away shirts in the late 1970s. But brown as a club's signature colour is an unusual choice.

But then St. Pauli is an unusual club. Consider the little calling card carried by our visiting friend from Hamburg at Loftus Road:

St. Pauli fans against the right, reads the slogan. This, along with the picture of a fist smashing a swastika, tells you something about the unique image of our visitor's club, whose supporters are known for their left-leaning politics. The terraces at the compact Millerntor-Stadion are known as the meeting place for fans who see themselves as proudly anti-racist, anti-fascist, anti-homophobic and anti-sexist. It can probably said without fear of contradiction that not a single football ground in England is associated with the full list of these values. This season's unpleasant Terry-Ferdinand and Suarez-Evra incidents and the reactions to them by some football fans have given lie to the notion that racism is entirely a thing of the past in the English game. But by and large it's possible to attend a good number of matches without hearing the racist abuse that was commonplace in days gone by.

But unreconstructed mockery of gays at the football goes on much as it ever did. Well, let's rephrase that. If there are any gay people on the pitch or in the crowd at football matches, they're certainly maintaining a low profile. So the mockery you can hear at a game of football is not directed at anyone actually known to be gay.  But songs, chants and shouts that would be sure to make any gay person present feel a bit uncomfortable are part of the culture. Gayness is a slur in this environment. So why wouldn't any gay people in the stands or on the pitch choose not to draw attention to themselves? Moreover, there must surely be other gay potential professional players and gay potential fee-paying spectators who are currently discouraged from getting involved. After all, who likes to go where he feels he isn't wanted? 

All of this is never more apparent than at matches involving Brighton and Hove Albion F.C. The seaside city, as almost all British readers will probably know, is famously home to one of this country's larger and more visible gay communities A little poem (of sorts) jotted down here a while ago consisted of nothing more than songs sung by QPR fans at Brighton's old Withdean Stadium:

does your boyfriend, does your boyfriend, does your boyfriend know you're here? 

sing when you're rimming, you only sing when you're rimming 

stand up 'cos you can't sit down 

All good fun? Well, perhaps not for any Brighton supporters who actually are gay.

A recent BBC documentary explored the question of why not one professional footballer has come out as openly gay since the late Justin Fashanu's sexuality was revealed almost twenty-two years ago. In the programme, presented by Fashanu's niece Amal, one current player interviewed was that man Joey Barton. But the QPR captain aside, it seems few people in the game are prepared to risk expressing an opinion about whether the sport can offer opportunities to make a living to an openly gay man.

In sharp contrast to all this, not only has Hamburg's F.C. St. Pauli talked the anti-homophobia talk by writing "tolerance and respect in mutual human relations" into the club's Leitlinien (fundamental principles), but the club has also walked the walk in some important ways. How many other football clubs clubs have ever appointed a gay man as club president? For eight years, the openly gay entrepreneur and theatre owner Corny Littmann occupied that role at St. Pauli. 

What, then, of the allegedly anti-sexist strand of the unique culture of St. Pauli? Well, in 2002, the club's supporters voted to ban advertisements for the men's magazine Maxim from the Millerntor-Stadion on the grounds of the adverts' depiction of women being inconsistent with the famous St. Pauli Leitlinien. Consider that for a moment, gents, when you bring your wife, girlfriend or daughter to Loftus Road and she hears a section of the crowd singing that west London is "wonderful" because "it's full of tits, fanny and Rangers". 

St. Pauli. If you like your punk music and your old school lefty politics, or if you're a paid-up member of the derisively mythologised 'PC brigade' then what's not to like about the quirky club from Hamburg? Their fans even get to enjoy the non-stop excitement of alternating promotion and relegation campaigns as they yo-yo regularly between Germany's top two divisions. Wrap all of this in a pirate flag bearing the fans' unofficial skull-and-crossbones motif and it's easy to see why underground musicians from all over Europe have eulogised St. Pauli in song.

This all seems like a unique and heady brew. Well worth a pilgrimage and a mad weekend in Hamburg, taking in both the Millerntor-Stadion and the famous Jolly Roger pub on Budapester Strasse. When our German visitor to Loftus Road handed over his anti-fascist calling card and was chatting about his club, it was clear that he is used to conversations with people who admire St. Pauli for its quirkiness and its values. The Hamburg side enjoys something of a cult status.

It seems unlikely that our QPR will ever be positioned as a hotbed of left-wing radicalism or as a brand standing for unique levels of tolerance of difference. For one thing, it seems very improbable that any such outlandish thing could ever be welcomed by a high percentage of our supporters. Head over to just about any QPR fans' messageboard and make a crusading argument in favour of any of the anti-racist, anti-sexist or anti-homophobic values espoused at St. Pauli. See how long it takes for you to be dismissed as part of that mythical 'PC brigade'. So we'll never attract the particular form of admiration that St. Pauli gets from some quarters.

But even so, some of us may hanker for the days when QPR was viewed with a kind of affection by supporters of other clubs. What would it take to return to our former status as an inoffensive and rarely disliked little club? Well, relegation may help. But if we carry most of our better-paid players down to the Championship and find that their presence in the squad is enough to make the Rangers a very competitive force down there then universal admiration may not be the result.

No one likes us? Do we care?

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