Queen's Park: Defying Expectations in the Championship

Queen’s Park were meant to fade. They were meant to slide quietly back down the SPFL ladder once the money dried up and the grand plans were packed away.

They have refused to play that part.

When word spread last year that Lord Haughey was ending his financial agreement with Scotland’s oldest club, the easy prediction was a slow drift towards the lower leagues and obscurity. Instead, Sean Crighton’s team dug in. They flirted with the promotion play-offs and finished sixth in the Championship, a season that felt more like defiance than survival.

The academy, once a proud production line, has gone. That could have been the end of the story. It isn’t. The under-17s and under-19s are thriving, both winning their leagues last season and quietly restocking the club’s identity from the bottom up.

Behind it all, Haughey has not vanished either. His City Charitable Trust has helped reshape Lochinch, Queen’s Park’s training base tucked inside Glasgow’s Pollok Park, into a facility that looks nothing like a club supposedly on the wane.

“One thing we’ve got here is a great training centre,” says 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 target. Not just to stay up, but to matter.

A club built to move players on

Queen’s Park are now firmly aligned with Craig Mulholland’s vision at the Scottish FA: develop Scottish talent, polish it, and watch the balance sheet benefit when those players move on.

The club’s history makes that philosophy feel natural rather than forced. Andy Robertson and Lawrence Shankland both took formative steps in senior football in Queen’s Park colours. Crighton wants the next wave to do the same.

“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.”

This is not a club clinging to the past; it is one trying to live it properly.

“We need to be that club because that’s Queen’s Park’s history,” Crighton adds. “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.”

Progress, then pass them on. It is ruthless and romantic at the same time.

Learning the hard way in the Championship

On the pitch, the reality is harsher. Queen’s Park’s League Cup group campaign offered encouragement, but the Championship has quickly reminded them where they stand. They sit second bottom, looking up at most of the division and preparing for an early-season scrap.

Scott Martin has seen enough football to know what that means. At 29, the central midfielder is one of the older heads in a dressing room deliberately tilted towards youth, and he can see the raw talent around him.

“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.”

The loans from Rangers are a test for both club and players. At Ibrox, youngsters are used to dominating possession, dictating games, and playing in structures designed to suit them. The Championship is something else entirely.

“At Rangers, they must be so used to dominating the ball and having time,” Martin explains. “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 learning curve is steep, but it runs both ways. Queen’s Park need their young players to grow quickly. The table will not wait.

Belief from a stalemate

For all the early-season strain, Martin is convinced they will have enough to stay in the division again. The fixture list offers no respite, with Ayr United – one place and one point above them – arriving at Lesser Hampden for a televised Friday night match on BBC Scotland.

“Anybody can beat anybody,” Martin says. He has seen the margins.

“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.”

A goalless draw as a turning point says plenty about how fine the line is. It also says plenty about Queen’s Park’s current reality. They are not chasing promotion yet. They are trying to stitch together performances, minutes, and belief.

“In terms of where we are this season, I think we’re OK,” Martin insists. “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 demise was supposed to be swift and simple. Instead, Queen’s Park are still here, still awkward, still producing, still believing. The question now is not whether they will disappear, but how far this new version of Scotland’s oldest club can climb while refusing to let go of what made them special in the first place.