Queen's Park: Defying Expectations in Scottish Football

Queen's Park were supposed to fade. They were supposed to slide quietly back into the lower-league shadows once the money dried up and the grand experiment ended.

They have done the opposite.

When word spread last year that Lord Willie Haughey was winding down his financial agreement with Scotland’s oldest club, the prediction was brutal and simple: Queen’s Park would tumble back through the Scottish Professional Football League trapdoor and stay there. No academy, no big backer, no future.

Yet here they are. Still standing, still awkward, still refusing to play the role assigned to them.

Sean Crighton’s team didn’t just survive last season; they pushed. For long spells they flirted with the promotion play-off spots before eventually finishing sixth – a placing that felt less like mid-table and more like a statement of intent.

The academy, the one that helped launch careers like Andy Robertson’s and Lawrence Shankland’s, may be gone in its old form. But the pipeline hasn’t dried up. Far from it. Queen’s Park’s under-17 and under-19 sides both won their leagues last season, quietly reinforcing the club’s reputation as a factory for opportunity.

And Haughey has not vanished either. His City Charitable Trust sits in the background, reshaping the infrastructure rather than the wage bill, helping turn the Lochinch training base in Pollok Park into a serious facility.

“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 bar now. Not survival. Credibility.

A club built to move players on

Queen’s Park have long sold themselves as a launchpad. The Scottish FA’s Craig Mulholland wants clubs to lean into youth development with a clear eye on both the national team and the balance sheet. Queen’s Park already live in that space.

Crighton reels off the names like a proud teacher.

“Josh Fowler’s moved on to St Johnstone, doing well in the Premiership. Seb Drozd has moved on to Partick Thistle – he’s flying over there. Henry Fieldson’s gone to St Mirren.”

There are more coming.

“We’ve got a barrowload of them,” he says. Ross McLean is the headline act for now, a youngster who dipped his toes into the first team last season and has kicked on again. “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 is another. Twenty-six appearances last season underline the point: if you’re good enough, you play.

Crighton is clear about the brief he accepted when he walked into the job.

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

In a league where many teams cling to experience, Queen’s Park are doubling down on potential.

Learning the hard way in the Championship

On the pitch, the learning curve is steep. After a sharp League Cup group stage that hinted at a smooth transition into the new campaign, the Championship has bitten back. Queen’s Park sit second bottom, one place and one point behind Ayr United, who visit Lesser Hampden on Friday night in front of the BBC Scotland cameras.

Inside the dressing room, the mood doesn’t match the table.

Scott Martin, at 29 one of the elder statesmen in a young squad, has seen enough to believe the foundations are solid. The former Hibernian and Hamilton midfielder has watched the next wave arrive and adapt.

He picks out two loanees from Rangers, both on co-operation deals, as examples of what Queen’s Park are trying to be.

“Young Aiden McCallion, 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, he’s lightning.”

The jump from Rangers’ youth and B-team football to the Championship is brutal. Time on the ball disappears. Mistakes are punished. Games go end to end and never really breathe.

“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 league table says struggle. Performances, Martin insists, tell a more nuanced story.

A turning point in Maryhill?

Results have been patchy, but Queen’s Park believe the mood shifted with a goalless draw at Partick Thistle.

“We’ve had a lot of difficult games,” Martin says, “but I think the Partick Thistle game was our turning point 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.”

It wasn’t a classic. It didn’t need to be. It was a night when a young team proved to themselves that they could dig in, match one of the division’s heavyweights and emerge with something tangible.

“In terms of where we are this season, I think we’re OK,” Martin adds. “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 Championship is unforgiving, but it is also chaotic. Runs appear from nowhere. Positions flip in a fortnight.

“Anybody can beat anybody,” Martin says, and in this league that’s not a cliché, it’s a warning.

Queen’s Park go into the Ayr game with pressure on the table and belief in the building. The facilities are in place. The youth line is humming. The model is clear.

Now comes the real test: can a club built to develop and sell still bite hard enough to stay where it wants to be?