Queen's Park: Building for the Future in Championship
Queen's Park were meant to be fading into the background by now.
When word leaked last year that Lord Haughey was ending his financial agreement with Scotland’s oldest club, plenty expected the Spiders to slide quietly back down the Scottish Professional Football League ladder and into the shadows.
They didn’t.
Sean Crighton’s team dug in last season, flirted with the promotion play-off spots and eventually parked themselves in sixth. Respectable. Stubborn. A long way from the demise that was being forecast.
The famous academy is gone, but the pipeline is not. Queen’s Park’s under-17s and under-19s both won their leagues last season, a pointed reminder that the club’s identity is still rooted in development, even if the badge on the programme looks a little different these days.
Haughey, too, has not vanished. His City Charitable Trust has helped turn Lochinch, the training base in the middle of Glasgow’s Pollok Park, into an impressive hub for a club that now trains like a modern Championship outfit rather than a romantic relic.
“One thing we’ve got here is a great training centre,” says manager Crighton. “And, obviously, at Lesser Hampden, the pitch is unbelievable. We’ve got the facilities – we need to be a good Championship team.”
That’s the bar now. Not survival. Credibility.
A club built to move players on
Queen’s Park have long been a launchpad. Andy Robertson and Lawrence Shankland both used the club as a springboard to captain Scotland and Rangers respectively. Crighton wants that tradition to feel like a living thing, not a sepia photograph.
He doesn’t have to look far for evidence.
“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.”
Then he turns to the ones still in the building.
“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.”
This is not accidental. It is policy.
“We need to be that club because that’s Queen’s Park’s history,” Crighton says. “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.”
The words match the new Scottish FA vision under Craig Mulholland, with Queen’s Park buying into the idea of developing young Scottish talent not just for glory, but for the balance sheet. This is football with a business plan.
Learning the hard way in the Championship
On the pitch, the present is less romantic. After a strong League Cup group campaign, the Championship has bitten back. Queen’s Park sit second bottom, looking up at an Ayr United side only one place and one point better off before they meet at Lesser Hampden.
Inside the dressing room, there is little panic. Scott Martin, at 29 a relative veteran in this squad, has seen enough to know what he’s looking at.
“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.”
They arrive from Rangers used to having the ball, dictating games, playing in comfort. The Championship does not do comfort.
“At Rangers, they must be so used to dominating the ball and having time,” Martin says. “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 adaptation is ongoing. The belief, Martin insists, is intact.
“Anybody can beat anybody,” he says, looking ahead to Friday’s BBC Scotland TV match against Ayr.
“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.”
That’s the tightrope Queen’s Park now walk: a club built to sell, a squad built on youth, and a league that punishes inexperience. The infrastructure is in place, the pathway is clear.
Now they have to prove they can keep growing without falling.
