1871 - the ultimate Reading FC website

Internet Links

6/1/2002 - All links checked; dead ones removed plus a couple of additions.
19/9/2002 - A few additions.

Fans' websites with regular updates . Reading FC messageboards . Fanzines . Fans' websites no longer being updated
Official sites . Players' sites . Local media sites . News agency Reading FC pages . News agency Division 1 pages . Miscellaneous

Fans' websites with regular updates

  1. www.13inarow.com - just in case you haven't worked it out yet, www.13inarow.com is closely entwined with 1871, so you shouldn't be too surprised to find it listed first.
  2. Hob Nob Anyone? - the first Reading FC website, which was up-and-running years before we latecomers even had internet connections. Home of the mailing list, the best message boards and the Prediction League.
  3. urzz.com - Royal Yank's site, the Reading FC Discussion Board Fanzine. Contains profiles of the HNA? board users and awards for different categories of posts.
  4. Back the Boys - the website of the characters who run Reading FC public address system
  5. Nobby's Style - the tale of the Reading FC "Do I Not Know That" quiz team
  6. Real Facts at Sir Dodgers - the webpage of Sir Dodger Royal, the most irritating person on the HNA? messageboards
  7. Reading FC - The Royals - a new site. Not connected to the obsolete sites with the same name.
  8. We Are The Real Hoops - Craig Beazley's new site
  9. The Rz! - John's new site. Contains the chants he sings, with most of the words wrong!
  10. Yahoo! Clubs readingfc - the Reading FC club on Yahoo! The club provides a message board and chat room for Reading fans to meet, as well as a gallery. Few users at the moment, which is a shame.
  11. RFC Supporter Locator Page - a large proportion seem to be clustered around Reading surprisingly enough, but you can see others dotted around the world. The site's creator, Rich Kilgore lives in St. Louis, USA. You can pick my old entry out quite easily....
  12. Royals' Record - Rob Andrews' statistics site
  13. The Reading FC Progress Page - Jon Keen's site, which has graphs showing our statistical progress this season
  14. Farewell to Elm Park - David Bowcock's fine site remembering Elm Park, with other Reading memories as well.
  15. Go-Berkshire Reading FC History - not actually a fan's site, but I can't see which other section to put this in. One page with a brief history of the club, which looks to me to bear the David Downs hallmark.

Reading FC messageboards

For links (most of which have been updated for the 2001/02 season) to messageboards of other clubs that we play and a Division 2 messageboard, go to the Opposition section.

  1. Reading FC mailing list - OK, I know it's not really a messageboard but it contains the same sort of stuff and this was the best heading to put it under. Contributions tend to be more factual than those on messageboards. If you follow the link you get to a page telling you how to subscribe.
  2. HNA? Discussion Forums (link changed to new board on 23/6/2002) - new-style forum split by topic. Requires registration to post.
  3. HNA? General Discussion Board - was once the best but now little used
  4. URZZ.com discussions - the messageboards of the website set up as a fanzine for the messageboards on the fanzine website Hob Nob Anyone? Confused? You should be.
  5. Teamtalk Reading Page Your Say - gets some really odd posts; I don't know if Teamtalk make them up. The amusing thing about this page is that there is an Editor who often responds to posts and pretends to be a Reading fan, clearly without having a clue who any of our players are.
  6. Reading FC Messageboard - part of the Reading FC the Royals site listed above. A few posts.
  7. Anthony Rougier Message Board - they've renamed it (previously the Anthony Roger message board!) but there's still no messages
  8. Real Facts at Sir Dodgers Forums - from Sir Dodger Royal's website
  9. Dazza's Royals Messageboard - nothing much there
  10. Reading FC Bulletin Board - nothing much there

Fanzines

  1. Junction 11 - F.O.R.E. - this is issue 3 from some time ago and we're still waiting for issue 4. Quite brilliant in places, though. And just what do those initials stand for?
  2. The Whiff - contains some selections from back issues plus a good chunk of the most recent issue, and a hint that they're only going up to issue 32 in the future (well, either that or a piece of bad planning).

Fans' sites no longer being updated

Some of these sites listed below are clearly intended as "one-offs", whilst others started out with regular updates but then fell into disuse (and there's no shame in that - it'll happen to all of us one day). Others are sites under construction that may develop into regularly updated sites.

But if you're the woman whose page begins with "I prefer r*gby but I also watch Reading FC" or the people whose site is littered with egg-chasing adverts, then you can forget a link from here until you see sense.

  1. fromtheterrace Reading page - contains articles about Reading, plus has space for player profiles and match reports. Had regular updates from June to September 2001 but then stopped.
  2. Player of the Season - unofficial Player of the Season vote for 2000/2001. Martin Butler was the clear winner.
  3. URZ.4T.COM - site started up in the summer of 2001 but didn't last long (last updated 7/11/2001)
  4. @URZ (www.surf.to/urz) - I missed this at the time it was set up. It contains news, match reports and some photos from away games (last updated March 2001).
  5. Dazza's Royals - Darryl Eaton's site. Contains Reading FC icons for use on Windows desktops and home of the 2000/01 fantasy league competition (last updated 20/8/2000).
  6. Un-Official Reading FC - Oliver Burrell's site (last updated 21/2/2001)
  7. Phil George's Site - includes latest news (up to 25/7/2000) and photos of the outside of Madejski Stadium on the day of the first game
  8. The Paul Brayson Appreciation Society - one of the great humour sites on the web. The first time that a website was entirely dedicated to one Reading FC player, and most importantly containing photos of the slimline Brayson at Newcastle, hinting at where it all went wrong.
  9. Darren Caskey's Worship Site - that's worship OF Darren Caskey, not BY him, incidentally. This site appeared as an attempt to redress the balance after the Paul Brayson site came into existence.
  10. Tankman 2000 - one Reading FC page with a nice picture of the scoreboard at Madejski Stadium showing a typical score.
  11. Yan's Home Page - contains a selection of Reading FC links and there's also a Reading FC page waiting to be completed.
  12. The Madman's Reading FC Page - totally rubbish site, consisting of one page slagging off one of our players
  13. Reading FC Fan Pages - James Murray's site
  14. Reading FC - a few pages from Andrew Randall's site. Last updated 21/10/1999.
  15. The Royal Web - site of Jon Castell, a fan who at the time was in Canada. Last updated 13/2/1999
  16. The Dave Crown Steamers - home page of a Sunday football team in Reading. The history of the club explains where the name came from.
  17. My Reading Football Club Home Page - one page produced by G. Dougall
  18. Marc D. Miell's Reading FC Page - some photos of the home game with Man City on 27/3/1999
  19. Tim's Bits [oo er] - Tim Saunders' homepage including some talk about Reading FC
  20. Andrew's Royals Site - not much there, but does have the biggest Madejski Stadium photo anywhere on the web
  21. Pav Kudlac's 100% Unofficial Reading FC website - a page of links (which is obviously based on my page!) and not much else. If you're reading this Pav, I've taken "revenge" by adding some links you had that I'd missed out on.
  22. URZ - purportedly the website of the URZ group of fans. However it doesn't contain any information and I'd never heard of the webpage before despite being one of those involved in URZ.
  23. Reading Football Club Unofficial Site - one picture, one stadium diagram, and two match reports, one of which is for a Bournemouth game. All very odd, and out-of-date.

    The next three sites seem to screw up the back button on the browser, so I've set them up to open in a new window.
  24. MSN Web Communities - Reading FC - nothing much worth looking at
  25. MSN Web Communities - Reading till I die - contains quite a lot of stuff but it's all pinched from the official site or Hob Nob Anyone?
  26. MSN Web Communities - U R's - nothing much worth looking at

Official sites

  1. The Official Reading Football Club Site - exactly what it says. Relaunched in a new format making it look the same as every other club site, which is definitely not an improvement.
  2. Supporters Trust at Reading - temporary home for the official website of STAR
  3. Reading Football Supporters' Club - the official website of the supporters club, now partly out-of-date but still containing some relevant information
  4. Reading Referees' Association - it's their fault! To be more precise, it's the fault of their colleagues from elsewhere in the country. The Reading refs are the people who once supplied the laws quiz page for the club programme.
  5. Football Supporters' Association - the site of the organisation campaigning for the rights of ordinary fans
  6. The Football Association - redesigned site, but still has the same content
  7. The Football League - redesigned website, following the standard format of Nationwide League clubs. They did promise that it would be better after the redesign, and it certainly is (which tells you just how appalling it was before!).
  8. FIFA - includes the world rankings.
  9. UEFA - includes a link to every top division club in Europe and every club that's qualified for European competition. One day soon that will mean us. Also has good factual information such as the coefficients used to determine the number of clubs each country gets to enters in UEFA club competitions.

Players' sites

  1. Kelly Chambers' Footy Page - Kelly played for Reading's Under-16 womens' academy side in 2000/01, and so she becomes the first EVER Reading FC player to have their own website.
  2. Anthony Rougier Fan Club - site started up in tribute to our former Caribbean star. Although it is not run by Rougier, he has officially endorsed it, so it goes down as the second Reading FC player's website.
  3. Marcus Hahnemann - unofficial tribute site for Reading's American international goalkeeper

Local media sites

  1. Reading Evening Post sport - this takes you to their sports news index. They upload several articles each weekday with usually one or two about the Royals, and now have an archive as well.
  2. icBerkshire Reading FC page - contains stories about the club from the Reading Chronicle. This link is to the Reading FC index page.
  3. BBC Berkshire Online Sport index - contains news items about Reading FC at the foot of the page. Also contains links to stories at the top of the page, but they are just the same articles that you will find if you follow the link to the BBC Sport Reading FC page shown in the next section.
  4. Teletext local sport South region - occasionally contains Reading FC news items, but their coverage of us is nothing short of appalling. Does have a match preview and report for nearly every game, but always gives us third billing behind Bournemouth and Brighton. The link isolates the only teletext index page of interest.

News agency Reading FC pages

  1. Teamtalk - they steal stories from anywhere and will make up rumours if they don't get a story. But the fact is that they run three or four stories a day, and once you learn how to interpret the latest rumour, then it's a good source for club news.
  2. BBC Sport - now that we are in Division 1, has news stories as well as a match preview the day before a game and a Press Association match report afterwards.
  3. BBC Sport - Live Text Commentary - service with text commentary on all Reading league and FA Cup games. Updates every two minutes during the game, and the text from the whole game remains there until the next match takes place.
  4. BBC Radio Berkshire Loyal Royals - the part of the local radio station's website devoted to Reading FC. Includes a prediction league, player of the month vote, and audio files to listen to the station's latest news and sports bulletin. Also has links to the other BBC website pages for Reading.
  5. Planet Football - publishes news stories from the Press Association.
  6. Ananova - contains regular news stories.
  7. Nationwide Football Reading FC page - contains news releases from the Press Association.
  8. ITV Football - news stories from the Press Association and some statistics.
  9. Soccernet Reading FC page - from the ESPN website. Runs at about one story per day.
  10. Reading Guide - Football page - has news stories and a report on most matches Is getting regular updates again from July 2001 after stopping in April.
  11. Football News - seems to have almost completely dried up, with an update once every blue moon
  12. Soccerbase - Reading - Soccerbase's index of Reading FC data. Will show you exactly who played in each game, who scored, who got yellow cards, and so on. However, does contain a few errors that they did not change when I e-mailed them.
  13. Football365 Statistics - Reading - Football365 takes no real interest in clubs outside the Premiership except for those that they deem to be "big". However they do have a decent stats page for every club, and this link takes you to the Reading page.
  14. Football Unlimited - Reading - contains the articles from the Guardian and the Observer about Reading. As a result contains very little. Did you know that in 1993/94, the Guardian had a match report every Monday from one game in either division 2 or division 3? Despite the fact that we were top of those 48 clubs for most of the season and eventually won division 2, they featured us only once (once!) all season, and that was the defeat away to Plymouth in March where they slagged us off. Pathetic. I switched to another paper soon after.
  15. World of Sport Reading page - story of the season via basic news headlines and match statistics
  16. Soccer Association.com Reading page - basic statistical details of the club

News agency Division 1 pages

This list is of those sites that don't have a special Reading page (and shame on them for that) but do contain information about Reading on a Division 1 or Nationwide League page.

  1. Sporting Life - Division 2 page. Normally only a few stories added each day, and that's for the whole division.
  2. Sports.com - Division 2 page. News stories plus a link to the results page with reports and statistics from all games. Note that there are separate pages for cup competitions.
  3. Daily Telegraph - Division 2 page. Contains articles from the newspaper covering news or match reports. Note that there are separate pages for cup competitions. (Warning: Never believe anything you read in the Tory press.)
  4. Football365 - Division 2 section of their Nationwide League page. Generally goes several days without an update and then adds a load all at once. Their stories come from Ananova, so are unlikely to include anything not in the Ananova Reading FC page listed above.
  5. Sky Sports - Nationwide League page, which replaced the separate pages they had for each division. This of course demonstrates very strongly the complete lack of commitment that Sky have to non-Premiership football.

Miscellaneous

  1. Reading FC Collectors Corner - a huge list of Reading FC memorabilia for sale, including programmes, fanzines, ticket stubs, etc.
  2. Royals Search - The Reading FC search engine. Fed up with search engines telling you about the Kansas City Royals baseball team, or a particular family of freeloaders living off the state? Then this is the search engine you've been waiting for.
  3. Footballshirts.com - the Reading FC page of a site to allow you to buy shirts directly from football clubs via the web. You can buy various items including the current four replica shirts and the Tenacity Spirit & Flair warm-up shirt.
  4. Reading Football Club Credit Card - spend money and help the Royals! A Mastercard credit card specifically for Reading supporters. This site is frequently unavailable.
  5. Reading Buses - details of the services to Madejski Stadium for the 2000/01 season. To see the services for 2001/02, follow the link to the latest news page and look for the section headed "Football Bus Services".
  6. Millennium Madejski Hotel - the hotel that's right next to the ground. Strangely enough, they mention racing at Newbury, Ascot and Windsor as nearby sporting attractions but fail to mention Reading Football Club anywhere. Disgraceful. I also can't see the accomodation prices anywhere but that's no problem as I don't want to stay in the same place as the sort of people that this hotel obviously caters for.
  7. EURO'1 Soccer Club - an under-14 US boys' football club "twinned" with Reading FC. The name is because they are visiting Europe in 2001.
  8. Football Statistics - Spencer Collyer's site, showing all sorts of statistics for clubs in all four divisions. And best of all, it's run by a Reading fan.
  9. Football Transfers Information Website - contains a wealth of information about transfers. Most information is on Premiership teams or top foreign clubs, but does cover the Nationwide League as well.
  10. Soccernet Who's Who - biographies of professional players in England.
  11. Football News Division 2 Statistics Index - all sorts of statistical information, like who was the best team in the first half of games only. Mostly pointless, I find.

 

And finally, a very self-indulgent list of some non-football sites about my favourite things.

  1. The Avengers Forever - website covering every aspect of the greatest TV programme ever made. Eee-urp!
  2. Heavens Above - want to see the International Space Station fly overhead? Or the space shuttle? This site will tell you when and in which part of the sky to look.
  3. The Labour Party - we are the masters now!
  4. Reclaim The Streets - organisation dedicated to allowing people to take priority over cars
  5. Political Compass - take the test and see where you lie on the political spectrum. My score was:
    Economic Left/Right: -7.96; Authoritarian/Libertarian: -4.35
  6. Electrotank On-line Crazy Golf game - once you're addicted, you won't thank me for putting this link here....
  7. Telephone Preference Service - ... but you might really thank me for this one. Register your phone number with this free site and in a few weeks all those annoying phone calls trying to sell you double glazing or a different electricity supplier will cease.
  8. Mailing Preference Service - register your name and address with this free site, and within six months you should receive no more junk mail. (With apologies to any readers who work in Direct Marketing, but it's your own bloody fault.)

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