Queen's Park's Resilience: A Defiant Stand in the Championship
News of Queen's Park’s demise, to borrow and twist that famous line, has been wildly premature.
When word broke last year that Lord Willie Haughey was ending his formal financial agreement with Scotland’s oldest club, plenty assumed the Spiders would simply slide back down the SPFL ladder and vanish into the lower-league shadows again. That neat little narrative never arrived.
Sean Crighton’s team dug in. They didn’t just survive; they pushed. For long spells last season, they flirted with the promotion play-off places before settling for a hard-earned sixth place in the Championship. Respectable. Defiant. A long way from the obituary some were ready to write.
Yes, the fabled Queen’s Park academy is gone. That chapter has closed. But the production line hasn’t stopped, it has just changed shape. The under-17s and under-19s both won their leagues last season, a quiet statement that the club’s youth identity is still very much alive.
And Haughey has not disappeared either. His influence lingers in bricks, mortar and manicured grass. Through his City Charitable Trust, he has helped transform Lochinch, Queen’s Park’s training base set in the middle of Glasgow’s Pollok Park, into a facility that looks every inch a modern, ambitious club’s home.
“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 standard he keeps coming back to. Not just staying in the division. Being good in it.
A club built to develop – and sell
Queen’s Park have always been a cradle for talent. The modern game has simply put a price tag on it.
The club helped launch the careers of Scotland captain Andy Robertson and Rangers skipper Lawrence Shankland, two of the most prominent adverts for what a spell at Lesser Hampden can do for a young player. Crighton wants that conveyor belt not only running, but accelerating.
“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 an accident. It is the plan.
“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.”
It also happens to align neatly with Craig Mulholland’s new Scottish FA vision of developing young Scottish talent with a clear eye on value, both sporting and financial. Queen’s Park are not just nodding along; they are trying to be a flagship.
Veterans, kids and a brutal division
On the pitch, the mix is striking. In the middle of the park, 29-year-old Scott Martin already feels like a seasoned campaigner in a dressing room filled with emerging prospects.
He has a front-row view of 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 lesson is harsh but invaluable: the Championship does not care about reputations built in youth leagues. It is frantic, unforgiving and physical. It is also exactly the kind of environment that can harden a promising teenager into a proper senior footballer.
From League Cup optimism to a league scrap
The early signs this season teased something more comfortable. Queen’s Park put together a good League Cup group campaign, hinting at momentum, cohesion and maybe even a surprise package in the making.
The league has bitten back.
As the Championship schedule has settled into its grind, Crighton’s side have slid to second bottom. The table is not flattering, but the mood inside the camp is far from panicked, especially with Ayr United – just one place and one point ahead – arriving at Lesser Hampden for a Friday night test on BBC Scotland.
“Anybody can beat anybody,” Martin says. He has seen enough of this division to know that line is not a cliché, it is a warning.
“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 is the tightrope Queen’s Park now walk. A club determined to develop and move players on, while still demanding that those same youngsters drag them through one of the most unforgiving leagues in the country.
The facilities are there. The pathway is clear. The talent is coming.
Now the question is simple: can this youthful, restless Queen’s Park turn potential into points before the table starts to tell a different story?
