Queens Park Rangers travel to the Sixfields Stadium tomorrow to take on former bogey side Northampton Town.
Rangers have always travelled to the Sixfields Stadium more in hope than expectation, because Northampton Town has always lived up to the tag, “Bogey side”, a reference that was illustrated perfectly by the Cobblers fans.
With Rangers 2-0 up and Northampton down to ten men back in February 2002, with defender Roy Hunter receiving is marching orders after 11 minutes, it seemed the R`s were to canter to victory courtesy of a brace from Karl Connolly. But the old nemesis came back at Rangers with Derek Asamoah and Rangers fan Sam Parkin leading the way no only to draw the game, but to nearly win it in the dying stages.
Chants reverberated around the stadium of, “You`ll never beat the Cobblers!” and that looked true enough with Rangers winning only one of their last seven meetings with Town, in fact it was the most recent game at Loftus Road but once again they had to do things the hard way.
Rangers were two goals up courtesy of Lee Cook and Kevin Gallen, but once again the Cobblers wouldn`t lie down with Jerome Watt and Andy Kirk drawing them level. Finally however the late Ray Jones broke the resistance of the Cobblers rearguard to hand Gary Waddock`s men at last a win against the old foe.
Moving forward to present day and the fixture at hand, Northampton Town manager Stuart Gray is looking to have another good week in pre-season following the success of the Cobblers week in Germany.
‘A lot of the ground work has been done,’ Gray told the Northampton Chronicle
‘The fitness is good and the conditioning work has been done, so now we are moving on to look at shape, formations and the technical side of the game.”
‘Shape, possession and ball work will become more important in the next few weeks and we are looking forward to a good week with the game against QPR and then the visit to Luton on Saturday.’
There was one win and one draw in Germany for Northampton, scoring three goals and conceding only one. But they return to home soil for the first time in pre-season and the locals will be coming out in their numbers to see new signings Leon Constantine, Liam Davis and Abdul Osman, all keen to impress their new manager.
This is the R`s second friendly outing of pre-season following their 3-1 victory over Stevenage Borough at the weekend. Prices for the fixture are as follows:
Adults – £12
Senior Citizens and Under 21s – £7
Under 16s – £4
Under 7s – FREE
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