The Tigers re-enter the second tier fray, now known as the Coca Cola Championship, and battle hard to live with a competent QPR side and garner a point.

I don't believe in pre-season friendlies. For a start, there's no such thing as a pre-season, there is a football season and there is a cricket season, and in the cricket season you follow cricket, not football. And football isn't friendly; it's competitive, anxiety-inducing, passionate and sometimes nasty, but it's never friendly. So I don't believe in pre-season friendlies as, by definition, they don't exist, and those of you who think you've been watching them recently need to ask yourselves some pretty searching questions. But I believe in football, and this was a proper game of football in proper football division 2, and we were competitive. In a cracking atmosphere in front of 22000 (More, incidentally, than bothered to turn up to watch either SheffU or Thewhiteshite in their openers, which does rather suggest that people in those cities are not quite as stupid as we sometimes think). If you're an optimist, you'll have seen us keep our shape and play competitively against a side that has a year's experience at this level and are no-one's tip to be relegated. If you're a pessimist you'll have watched us struggle to open up a team that generally passed and retained the ball far better than we did even though they are no-one's tip to make a playoff place in this division. But we got a point against a side who were stronger, fitter, more skilful and nastier - in short, far better - than anyone we saw in the league last season. Perhaps half full and half empty would settle for that.

We lined up:

Myhill
Lynch Cort Coles Dawson
France Green Ashbee Elliott
McPhee Barmby

but not for very long, as within a minute of kick off with us defending the south stand Lynch was calmly shepherding a ball out of play, only for Paul Furlong to make a very late attempt to pressure him, culminating in a wild swing that contacted with knee cap not ball. That was the end of Lynch's afternoon, Delaney came on to partner Cort in the middle of the defence and Coles shifted to the right. It was a very bad challenge, but not important enough for a premiership referee like Dermot Gallagher to do anything about. Furlong, Gallagher, you're both arseholes, and as Lynch will have woken this morning pondering the effect of that challenge on his season and his career, I hope you both feel ashamed of how badly you did your jobs there. At least we can reflect that we finally seemed to solve our troublesome right back position, even if the solution lasted only 45 seconds.

But we still made a tidy enough start, as we reflected on the manager's decision to start with Ashbee and Green in the middle, something I'd not seen predicted anywhere. But it looked to be doing the job, as Green found Barmby whose flick to McPhee found the striker just offside. QPR showed their nasty side again on 12 minutes as one of theirs went through Greeny, with Gallagher again bravely doing fuck all.

On 14 came one of the few clear cut chances of the game, as Delaney completely lost Gallen 12 yards out, allowing the much-stayed-at-QPR striker to steady himself and shoot carefully wide with Bo looking anxiously at him. This precipitated our best spell of the game, as we won a free kick in their half, Elliott spannered a shot into the path of McPhee who flicked it cleverly with the outside of his boot but against the bar before, like us, noticing the lino's flag raised, probably correctly, for offside. Then in our best move of the game Barmby found France wide and at the by-line, his clever pullback was latched on to by McPhee who got a good but not outstanding contact and a mixture of defender and keeper scuffled it away for a corner. From the corner Cort rose impressively but headed wide.

This was about the last time we had any real control of the game. Lee Cook began to demonstrate wide on the left why Marc Joseph would be not so much a liability as a catastrophe at this level as he ran intelligently and trickily at Coles and got in a number of decent crosses. We dealt with them all well enough until our central defenders again completely lost one of their strikers. This time it was Furlong, and by the time we found him again, he was putting a free header wide. Another bad miss, but the sort of thing you have to expect when you pick a player whose main accomplishment is kicking players rather than footballs. The last 20 minutes saw QPR demonstrate the technique and temperament you need to keep hold of the ball at this level. We were frequently caught in possession, even players with the technique of Green and Barmby showed that they will take a game or two to adjust to the need to play skilfully at a higher tempo than has been required of them for a while. At half-time we were all a little thoughtful.

Second half and we came out like lively tigers, Elliott and Green combining well to put in Nicky but he was just unable to latch onto the ball. Then we earned a free kick that Dawson floated in and had their netman scrambling to grab it at the second attempt. Then we had another, as McPhee was flattened yet again by the hulking Danny Shittu after a long Myhill clearance, but Dawson hit it wide. Set pieces looked our best bet for scoring, Cort got in a good header from a corner that was saved, Greeny took yet another free kick, found Big Leon's head, he nodded on to Elliott, and the hard-working God-botherer flicked it just wide.

Again, and worryingly, the longer the half wore on, the more we laboured. Barmby became increasingly detached from McPhee, and we attempted to supply our forward with long balls lumped from defence which Shittu swallowed with scarcely a burp. Cook again ran at us wide and Furlong continued to kick our defenders. Bo made a good save from a long range effort from their full back which had us all shouting 'custodian of the leather!' but in truth he had a very good sight of it all the way and had he let it in it would have been a fearful blunder.

Taylor belatedly tried to even out things upfront by replacing Barmby with Fagan so that we had a knees and elbows merchant up against Shittu, and though he perhaps did unsettle him over the last 20 minutes, he came nowhere near to scoring and it was at the cost of a booking as Gallagher belatedly remembered he was dressed up like a referee. We also made a like-for-like substitution on the right, replacing ineffective wide man France with ineffective wide man Price with, you'll not be surprised to hear, little effect. Come the final whistle both teams looked not displeased with a point.

Impressions, well, we got a point. The loss of Lynch is going to be a blow, for though Coles did well, we're going to need him at the heart of the defence. We're going to have to learn to do what we do at a significantly faster pace than we're used to if we are going to discommode defences at this level. We're going to have to get fitter. And If we're going to get the best out of McPhee, we're going to need either a better supply to him on the ground, or if we can only get the ball forward in the air, we're going to have to find a place for Big Ben Burgess.

Most worryingly, we looked a bit intimidated by it all. Not just physically, although I do mean that way (we could have done Ashbee showing that he's willing to get into players' faces at this level as well as in the lower strata) but also in that Greeny's got to pass, Nicky's got to link and spin and swivel and Elliott has got to run at teams from wide and take up his positions for shots and headers. All looked a bit tentative yesterday. We never saw enough of what we could do, and there will be much sterner tests ahead. We also need to sort out the more moronic element of our fans, who predictably let us down once again. I don't think that any of them read this list any more, which is a pity, as Adrian Hoggarth's posting of earlier today should be required reading for anyone who thinks chants such as those aimed at the QPR fans yesterday are just a bit of fun and doesn't understand the harm they do to us as a club and as supporters. Their behaviour was disappointing, but not at all surprising.

But enough of that. We're launched at our highest level for 15 years, we've got our first point, we were competitive throughout and, though we didn't often enough look like winning, we seldom looked like losing. For now, given that we are still in the cricket season, and that the real sporting drama of the weekend was going on at Edgbaston a solid start is enough. We were more Ashley Giles than Shane Warne, but the People's Gilo's performance showed that honest commitment is far more important than merely having infinitely superior skill and ability.

Actually, it showed nothing of the sort, but England won and Australia lost and that's all that matters in the end. We had to make do with an honourable draw rather than a heart-stopping win yesterday, but just as you sometimes need to hang on in a Test cricket series and make sure you don't lose it before you can think about winning it, so you may need to ensure you don't lose touch with the peloton early on in a football league campaign. We showed that we understood that yesterday, and now we can use Monday to prepare for Tuesday and Wednesday.

HULL CITY (4-4-2): Myhill; Lynch, Cort, Coles, Dawson; France, Ashbee, Green, Elliott; McPhee, Barmby.  Subs: Delaney (for Lynch, 4), Fagan (for Barmby, 65), Price (for France, 78), Andrews, Leite.

Goals: None

Booked: Fagan

Sent Off: None

QUEEN'S PARK RANGERS: Royce, Bignot, Shittu, Santos, Rose, Rowlands, Doherty, Bircham, Cook, Gallen, Furlong.  Subs: Sturridge (for Rowlands, 68), Ainsworth (for Doherty, 69), Moore (for Sturridge, 72), Cole, Shimmin.

Goals: None

Booked: Cook, Santos

Sent Off: None

REFEREE: D Gallagher

ATTENDANCE: 22,201