I was disappointed with the result against Cardiff City. I don’t normally hang around too long after the match, but for some reason I just stood there staring at the pitch as everybody left.
I was there for a good 5 minutes or so after the game, feeling glum and a bit flat about the result and performance, but something did manage to cheer me up.
The players who weren’t involved on the day came out and started doing some stretches and exercises. I’m not sure if you could call it a warm down because they weren’t involved.
I was surprised to see Ray Jones out there. I thought to myself “Oh good”, because it meant that his foot was on the mend and I was really keen to see how he got on this season.
I watched him closely during the session. He was smiling and laughing and generally mucking around with Shabazz Baidoo. He was playfully pushing him about and being twice the size of Shabazz, there wasn’t much he could do about it! The pair of them giggled like innocent kids and there seemed to be a lot of love and happiness in the air. The mood was good.
It made me smile. There had been rumours Ray might be sold on, especially after the club had publicly turned down bids from him from Colchester this summer and we almost lost him in the January transfer window to Fulham.
I really hoped he wouldn’t leave and was concerned he might want to move onto bigger and better things. His body language however told a completely different story. He looked like a cheerful young man who was full of life and ready to break back into our first-team. He was relaxed and looked happy to be out there.
I left the ground feeling good about his impending return to the first-team squad and I was sure he was going to be a real handful partnering Dexter Blackstock up front this season. I really enjoyed how those two kids bullied opposition defenders around, but in such an honest fashion and so QPR.
It would be my last living memory of him and it’s sort of fitting and humbling in some way that for those few short moments, I felt like I caught everything that was good about his life and the very essence of his personality. I felt like I knew him and wanted to know him.
Ray was a marvellous prospect and one of the few players that we had any serious hope of receiving big money for. In many ways, he was our secret weapon in our fight for financial survival and against the ABC loan.
He was the one player who would have turned QPR’s fortunes around. We were in a no-lose situation. Either he would have stayed with us and blasted us to glory or we wouldn’t have been able to resist a massive money offer at some point from a Premiership team. He was destined for the top.
Forget your takeover bids; Ray Jones was our best bet out of financial ruin.
His untimely death over the weekend has taken just about everything out of me and I’ve done nothing but sit around the house or work for the past couple of days and think or sulk about it. My heart feels heavy and my insides sore and raw. I feel so grumpy and helpless and there is a surreal feeling about the air that just won’t go away.
I will forever rue not getting the opportunity to see him grow as a player and a person. Words cannot express the sympathy I feel for his parents, family, friends, loved ones and to all those who knew him on a personal level to the fans who all shared the same feeling of hope that he gave our club. Likewise, the same sentiments are felt for Ray’s friends who were also involved in the accident.
It’s always difficult to know what to say in situations like these or to find positives from such an unfortunate death, but I’ll give it a go…
I hope that this tragedy can help bring QPR together again and allow strained relationships to mend or heal, or to start over as we unite as one. It’s a chance for a clean slate and a new beginning. A chance for us to work together and turn QPR into the proud the club we have always dreamed that it should be.
We owe it to Ray. He would have tried to do it by himself. Now let’s do it for him.
RIP Ray. 
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