Stan could sometimes be seen going to the betting shop before the game in his kit, then walking down South Africa Road trying to get back in the ground on time.
STEVE RUSSELL, QPR FAN
As the star of the Queens Park Rangers team throughout much of the 1970s, Stan Bowles would turn up in the dressing room on Saturdays at a quarter to three, get changed and go straight out on to the pitch to entertain his audience his audience. No warm-up, no 'psyching-up' or mental preparation was required. Until a quarter to three he would have been watching the horse racing upstairs, in the lounge or at the bookie's. 'I could get away with it,' he said with a grin, 'simply because if I had been left out of the team at that time, when I was flying and probably the best player around, there would have been murders from the crowd. So although the managers didn't like it, they accepted it.'
'That was just Stan,' confirmed Don Givens, Bowles' partner in the QPR attack. 'In those days we never went for a warm-up, and at about twelve minutes to three Stan would turn up, then at three minutes to three we'd be out on the pitch. He'd been watching the 2.45 race somewhere or at the bookie's just by the ground. Betting was a big part of his life, but as his team-mates, that didn't interest us. I played a lot of golf, but to the other boys that didn't mean a thing. As long as you can do your best when you're playing then everybody's individual interests are their own.'