Queen's Park's Resilience Amid Challenges
Reports of Queen's Park’s decline were filed early. Far too early.
When word spread last year that Lord Haughey was stepping back from his financial agreement with Scotland’s oldest club, plenty assumed the Spiders would quietly slide back down the SPFL ladder, returning to the shadows of the lower leagues.
They didn’t budge.
Under Sean Crighton, Queen’s Park dug in last season. They flirted with the promotion play-offs, stayed in the fight longer than many expected, and finished a very respectable sixth in the Championship. Hardly the story of a club in retreat.
Yes, the famous academy has gone. That still stings for traditionalists. But the pipeline has not dried up. The under-17s and under-19s both won their leagues last season, a pointed reminder that the club’s identity as a developer of talent is still alive.
And Haughey has not exactly disappeared. His City Charitable Trust has played a major role in transforming the club’s Lochinch training base in Glasgow’s Pollok Park, a facility that now underpins everything Crighton is trying to build.
“One thing we’ve got here is a great training centre,” the manager says. “And, obviously, at Lesser Hampden, the pitch is unbelievable. We’ve got the facilities – we need to be a good Championship team.”
The ambition stretches beyond survival. Queen’s Park are positioning themselves as a model club in line with Craig Mulholland’s new Scottish FA vision: develop young Scottish players, sell smart, stay competitive.
They have the pedigree to back it up. Scotland captain Andy Robertson and Rangers captain Lawrence Shankland both took important early steps in senior football in Queen’s Park colours. Crighton wants that production line not just preserved, but sharpened.
“Josh Fowler’s moved on to St Johnstone, doing well in the Premiership,” he says. “Seb Drozd has moved on to Partick Thistle – he’s flying over there. Henry Fieldson’s gone to St Mirren.
“We’ve got a barrowload of them [this season]. Young Ross McLean has come into the team last year a couple of times and progressed well this year. He’s a manager’s dream, he’s very versatile – he can play in the middle, he can play wide, he can play at the back.
“Tyrece McDonnell as well. I think he made 26 appearances last season.”
For Crighton, this is not a side project. It is the job.
“We need to be that club because that’s Queen’s Park’s history. The guys that are in the national team, they started at Queen’s Park.
“When I got the job, that was it from the outset. It was, ‘can you help players progress?’ Not just me, everyone in the building. That’s what we want to try and do.
“I’ve got a sense of pride that we’ve managed to have these players play for us and then move on.”
On the pitch, one of the dressing room’s older heads sees the same pattern. At 29, central midfielder Scott Martin is a relative veteran in this group, and he has a front-row seat to the next wave.
“Young Aiden McCallion [co-operation loan from Rangers], he’s a central midfielder as well,” Martin says. “He’s been great since he came through the door, gets on with his work, very tidy on the ball. Same with Lewis Stewart [also co-operation loan from Rangers], he’s lightning.
“At Rangers, they must be so used to dominating the ball and having time. But here in the Championship it’s a totally different game. It’s end-to-end, it’s high intensity.
“It will be a great experience for them because they’re learning a totally different side of the game that maybe you wouldn’t learn at a B team or an under-19s or 20s, whatever it might be. The way they have fitted in has been absolutely top notch.”
The problem, for now, lies in the table rather than the training ground.
After an encouraging League Cup group campaign, the Championship has hit back. Queen’s Park sit second bottom as they prepare to host Ayr United, who are just one place and one point ahead of them.
The mood, though, is anything but panicked.
“Anybody can beat anybody,” Martin says, looking ahead to Friday’s BBC Scotland TV game. “We’ve had a lot of difficult games, but I think the Partick Thistle game was our turning point [0-0 draw] in the sense that we found that belief that we can go to, in my opinion, the hardest place in the Championship and grab a point.
“In terms of where we are this season, I think we’re OK. There’s been parts of games where we play really, really well. It’s just trying to put that all together and be more consistent.
“We’ve got a youngish squad at times as well, so it can be a bit difficult, but we’re not far away from being a right good side again.”
The narrative around Queen’s Park has been one of endings: the end of an academy, the end of a funding deal, the supposed end of their time as a Championship force. Crighton and his players are writing something different.
The facilities are there. The pathway is clear. The talent is coming through.
Now the question hangs over Lesser Hampden: can this youthful, ambitious squad turn promise into points quickly enough to make this season about more than just staying up?
