The West London base of our opponents, Queens Park Rangers, was named Shepherds Bush because, in bygone days long ago, it was an area of green pasture used as a resting point for shepherds and their sheep to graze on while making their way to Smithfield Market in Central London.
But our forwards did not spend much time foraging on the grass at Loftus Road on Saturday, as we lost our fourth straight away game away from home.
It also seems that this venue is still a modern resting place, but this time for our players, after witnessing us struggle to keep any rhythm in a pedestrian effort throughout our one-goal defeat.
After winning five of our previous seven games at this stadium, I was rather confident that this streak could continue before the game began at the unsociable hour when I would usually be debating whether or not to get takeout from the Chinese on Saturday night.
After we wasted an early half-chance, there wasn’t much to cheer for the devoted travelling supporters who had given up their hard-earned money during the first half.
After spending a lot of money on yet another costly trip, our play-off ambitions had finally vanished with the devastating midweek loss at Southampton, so it was now a dead rubber.
Rangers, who face relegation, were not Southampton; they were far superior to us in every aspect.
However, it was difficult to discern throughout the match which team was, as it was claimed, just one win away from a play-off berth and which one was likely to go down with Rotherham United to League One’s bottom.
Almost halfway through the first half, Freddie Woodman, the custodian, let the ball slide out of his hands for the game’s lone goal.
Like the renegade vendor Del Boy, who abandoned his fake products as the cops showed up around the corner at Shepherds Bush Market nearby, he dropped it to the ground.
When Lyndon Dykes of Rangers took this present and joyfully tapped the ball into the net, he would have believed it to be “cushty,” but I felt anything but.
The game wore on to a sad end despite our best efforts in the second half, when we produced virtually little and, to be honest, were nowhere near to blowing the house down.
This was a difficult game to watch, much like many other games I’ve watched while following North End.
As my companion and I got up off the ground, we wondered why we continued to subject ourselves to this level of suffering.
Is it ignorance or is it devotion? The reason you do it is that you sometimes have nice days, but Saturday was definitely not one of them.
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