Going to see QPR on Boxing Day has become a tradition in the Young household – and not because we hold out much hope of winning. The Hoops have only won 19 of the 71 Boxing Day fixtures we’ve played since 1882, when the club was founded. The last time was in 2018, when we beat Ipswich 3-0 at home, and we haven’t won away since 1967. But going to watch our team, however poorly we play, beats festering at home in that fallow period between Christmas Day and 1 January, so my three sons and I piled into the car for the 150-mile round-trip to Fratton Road in Portsmouth.
We had an additional reason for making the journey, which was a special Christmas offer from Toby Carvery whereby anyone called Toby could eat for free. The Portsmouth branch was fully booked, but there was space in Bishopstoke, which wasn’t a massive detour. Admittedly, it did seem a bit excessive to be going for a roast meat buffet on 26 December, given how much turkey, stuffing and sausages we’d eaten on Christmas Day. But the boys were strongly in favour and I couldn’t resist the prospect of a free meal.
Unfortunately, things didn’t go according to plan.
‘My name’s Toby,’ I told the host when we arrived, showing him my passport. ‘I’m here to take advantage of the special offer.’ He gave a snort of laughter and asked whether I’d read about it on Facebook. As a matter of fact I had. ‘That’s a hoax,’ he said. ‘Nothing to do with us and, to be honest, I’m surprised that you believed it. There are a lot of people in Britain called Toby. If we let all of them eat for free, we’d soon go out of business.’
He had a point. It’s not as common as it was in the 1970s, when so many of my school friends were called Toby that we formed a football team called Toby United, but the name still regularly appears in lists of the 100 most popular boys’ names. Reluctantly, I reconciled myself to forking out £16.95 for my choice of three roast meats and all the trimmings. The boys, rather unwisely, went for the more expensive ‘king-size’ option – four roast meats! – and returned from the serving counter barely able to see over the top of their plates. Only Charlie, the youngest, managed to finish his. I used to be a restaurant critic, so cannot resist pointing out that the lamb was a little dry and the Brussels sprouts overcooked, but the gammon and turkey were first-rate.
After that, it was on to Fratton Park to watch the Rs. Now, to be honest, we weren’t completely reconciled to the prospect of losing. Going into this game, Portsmouth were 21st in the table, only one place above the relegation zone, whereas QPR were seventh. Our new manager, Julien Stéphan, has turned out to be pretty good, and we’ve won the last four home fixtures back-to-back. In addition to better tactics, we finally have a decent striker in the form of Rumarn Burrell, who already has nine goals, and the other new signings aren’t bad either. In the past two seasons, we’ve been lucky to avoid the drop, but this time my sons and I are fantasising about a promotion push.
I had seen a special offer from Toby Carvery whereby anyone called Toby could
eat for free
At least, we were until we saw the players’ first-half performance against Pompey. It was absolute dross, as if they, too, had tucked into a second Christmas roast an hour before. The hosts won all the second balls and on the rare occasions when we managed to claw back possession, we promptly gave it away again. We didn’t have a single shot in the first 45 minutes, let alone a shot on target, and our xG was 0.00. It was deeply frustrating, particularly after we’d watched the Rs beat Leicester City 4-1 at Loftus Road the previous Saturday in our best result of the season. How can we go from that to being so piss-poor in just six days?
We went in at half time 1-0 down, having conceded a goal in the last minute, and my sons and I were reconciled to another Boxing Day loss. Then, thankfully, we decided to play some football, turning in a much better performance in the second half. Our reward came in the 61st minute, when Jimmy Dunne, our Irish captain, managed to get his head on the end of a cross and guided the ball into the bottom left-hand corner. After that, we kept Portsmouth at bay and the game finished at 1-1. As the manager said in his post-match interview, coming away with a point when we only played properly for 45 minutes was a decent result. ‘I’ll take it,’ said Charlie, as he settled down to write the match report for our QPR Substack on the drive back to London.
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