| Competition | Date | Opponent | Venue | Result |
| Friendly | Tuesday, 1st August (7.45pm) | Kingstonian | Away | Won 3-0 |
Reading goals: Henderson, Caskey 2 (1 penalty)
Gamebreaker: The two first half Reading goals in
quick succession
Attendance: 700
Reading line-up: Whitehead, Newman, Robinson (Griffiths), Jones (Gamble), Viveash (Lockwood), Mackie, Parkinson (Evers), Caskey, Henderson (Igoe), Forster (Henderson), Hodges
Reading put on a very good performance to comfortably beat Kingstonian. The gap in class between the two teams was very obvous, even though Kingstonian are one of the best non-league teams. Reading started attacking from the outset, forcing two early corners. Hodges took the first which came to nothing. Caskey took the second and Parkinson headed onto Forster, who forced a save. Later Forster made a good run down the left, lost the ball, managed to regain it, cut inside and then shot ferociously from 30 yards. The keeper just tipped the ball round the post.
Keith Jones had limped off with what looked like a minor hamstring injury (that diagnosis brought to you from someone with no medical training and at a distance of 60 yards from the incident!). He was replaced by Joe Gamble who had a very assured game. Again, it appears that the squad is good enough to cope with switches of personnel, although we're going to run out of replacements pretty soon.
The attacks kept coming. Darren Caskey had a free-kick cleared, but we worked the ball to Robinson who also tried a very long shot. His went straight at the keeper and was dealt with comfortably. Then Nicky Forster was put clean through on goal, but one defender managed to get back to cover. Forster was pushed wide and crossed, but a defender just managed to flick the ball away for a corner before Caskey could get his head to the ball. That corner was knocked away for another corner, and from that one we got the breakthrough. A near-post corner was flicked on and after another touch fell for Henderson to easily put the ball home.
Almost immediately Caskey scored a second, as the ball fell to him in the area and he blasted wide of the keeper's dive. Still in the first half, Gamble shot over, and then another rendition of last year's free-kick routine (and I won't go into details in case any opponents are reading this!) led to a blocked shot.
At half-time, Winston Griffiths came on to play left wing, with Lee Hodges dropping back to replace the substituted Robinson. Griffiths had a small personal fan-club who stood on the part of the terracing nearest to where he would play. It soon became clear why they did this as he showed some breathtaking skill at times. However, he didn't really get into the game and was waiting for the ball to get played out to him.
Gamble had another shot, which also went over the bar, before Nicky Forster set off on a long run, beating man after man. Caskey called for the ball, but there was no chance of a pass. In the end, though, Caskey did get the chance as a Kingstonian defender stopped Forster by fouling him in the penalty area and it was Caskey who completed the scoring from the spot.
Towards the end of the match, Kingstonian finally started to show. In the last ten minutes they managed to blaze two shots over the bar and in the dying seconds hit the bar with a lob. In this game, unlike the Cheltenham and Southampton games, we kept the ball out of the net and so recorded another good win and clean sheet.
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