Last updated 14:37, Saturday, 30 August 2008

WITH the rising smoke from Carlisle United’s obliterated Carling Cup campaign came a lingering question – and no, it wasn’t John Ward asking Iain Dowie if he wouldn’t mind awfully lending him Queens Park Rangers’ South American magician for a week or two.

Big spenders: United’s Evan Horwood, left, attempts to tackle QPR’s hat-trick hero Emmanuel Ledesma. Inset, billionaire Loftus Road, and F1 chief, Flavio Briatore

Emmanuel Ledesma’s pulverising hat-trick against the Blues on Tuesday night was the direct product of Rangers’ extreme wealth and influence, and so the poser duly flashed up on our mental screens: Could Carlisle ever be like QPR, and – more importantly – would they want to be?

To visit Loftus Road four days ago was to witness a happy crowd utterly intoxicated by where their club is going; thousands of people giddy at the prospect of more exotic treats joining the likes of Ledesma on the pitch, as long as Flavio Briatore and his extravagantly-heeled associates keep shovelling their money into the furnace.

Our question is a valid one because if Carlisle are rapping hard on the door to the Championship – as United’s owners insist they will continue to do until it swings open – then they are also preparing to enter a place where plenty more opponents will be brandishing their affluence in the Cumbrian face.

The issue is whether the Blues eventually try to join them all on the money train and go clattering away from their roots, or keep the cord intact and stay truer to themselves, even if that means failure shuffles up the M6 just as often as success.

Certainly, the billionaire willing to sink his fortune into Carlisle United has yet to be found. Whether a glamour-chasing football tycoon will ever bring his helicopter down in Cumbria is plainly a matter for debate. But be in no doubt that, if the time ever came, we’d all be dashing down Warwick Road to sample the money drug.

That’s the word: drug. The moment you come off it is the killer. But this isn’t just the old warning about the kind of boom-and-bust vortex which recently claimed Gretna. It’s about the feeling, the sense of involvement. We can all confidently predict that QPR will look less like a west London football club with each passing year under Briatore’s opulent command. Last year the Formula One magnate helped pull a fine old club back from the precipice of administration; from now on, however, it is pursuing an international identity, a seat at the game’s giant roulette wheel.

You can accept this is the way of football today, but you don’t have to pretend it feels natural. You’re not obliged to warm to it. And it doesn’t take much effort to realise there is another way. Whilst in London last week, marking time between United matches at Leyton Orient and QPR, I paid a visit to AFC Wimbledon and the effect was to reconnect with what the game ought to mean.

The Wimbledon tale is well-known: angered at the controversial rerouting of their club to Milton Keynes, their supporters rejected the new badge and formed a new entity, close to home, faithful to the area.

On Monday more than 3,000 people filled their stadium in Kingsmead for a Conference South match with Bromley – the sort of gate that would plant AFC Wimbledon comfortably in League Two. Be in no doubt that they’ll eventually get there, and it will go down as a quite stunning achievement, but that isn’t the overwhelming point.

It is the feel of the place that engages the spirit. Local supporters, sweeping their local team along, carrying the usual fan anxieties but feeling significantly close to the whole operation. It isn’t over-romantic to report that in those crammed stands last Monday there was a defining mood of community, however mediocre the football.

Sure, the Wimbledon tale is specific to its own circumstances. By necessity their fans are more pro-active than those of other non-league clubs. No-one is suggesting Carlisle’s followers need to be on alert to do something similar, unless a future owner does something potty like trying to shift them into the Scottish league. And the Wombles aren’t necessarily a beacon club in every respect (Monday’s matchday programme contained a warning from their chief executive regarding fans’ misbehaviour during a recent game at Newport).

But, given the experiences of Monday and Tuesday, I knew where I felt steadier and happier, and it wasn’t Loftus Road (and no, that’s got nothing to do with the biting pain of Carlisle’s defeat there, or the general rule that smaller clubs generally feel warmer). One felt like a beautiful illusion, another was imperfect, but undeniably real.

Maybe this is the decision we’ll all eventually face: expensive, precarious thrills versus a more modest but lasting existence. From the armchair, this might seem a straight choice between excitement and boredom. But the fan with football in his marrow won’t necessarily see it this way – and it’s a reason why Carlisle should never feel obliged to pitch itself headlong into the gold rush.