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2000/01 Reports

Reading goals: None
Gamebreaker: Second Orient goal
Attendance: 4,337

Reading line-up: Whitehead, Gurney, Robinson, Parkinson (N Smith), Viveash, Hunter (Mackie), Igoe, Caskey (McIntyre), Butler, Cureton, Hodges
Subs not used: Ashdown, Gamble

Now, if Reading had decided that we didn't really care about the Worthless Cup this year, and then gone out to a third division side, I could accept that. You know the sort of thing - rest players with slight injuries, bring in some youngsters and squad players, drop hints before the match that it won't be the end of the world if we lose, and so on.

But that's not what happened here. It's quite clear that the club hierarchy and management team wanted and expected us to win this game, and so go through to the next round. However, the players (and by this I mean the majority of the players) decided that they weren't too interested, and believed that half-pace might be enough to see off Orient. To be honest, three-quarter pace might have done it - Orient have some qualities but should have been no match for Reading.

Anyway, the team was the same as against Port Vale except that Andy Gurney replaced Ricky Newman. The only possible reason for this was that Newman was still feeling his back injury (or had picked up another one). Rumours of Caskey and Robinson being out through injury proved ill-founded. Neil Smith returned from injury, and started on the bench.

Initially Reading had a bit of pressure without ever really looking dangerous. Early on, we had a series of three corners, two from the left wing and then one from the right, which put the defence into trouble. We tried the usual near-post flick-on routine, but the difference was that it almost worked. Perhaps third division defences aren't quite up to it. Hunter or Viveash made the flicks, but the ball never quite dropped in the right place.

Orient showed that they had come for a fight, and only a goal-line clearance from Robinson stopped them taking the lead after one of those moves where our defence looked like they had no idea what their function was, let alone how to carry it out.

After about half-an-hour, Reading seemed to step up a gear. Perhaps they were just worried about the tongue-lashing waiting in the dressing-room, but whatever the reason we had four decent chances to take the lead. The first came from a break. The ball was played out to Caskey on the left wing - the defender beat him for pace and got to the ball first but played it against Caskey's legs so that it fell nicely for our man! Very generous. Caskey went forward and played the ball across field to Butler. Butler was one-on-one with the keeper and had the choice of going for goal or looking for Cureton. He decided to shoot but put it tamely at the keeper.

Two moves soon after ended with right-wing crosses finding the head of Cureton, but both times the header went over the bar. It is amazing the way that the short Cureton gets to some of these balls, but on this night we didn't get the end result. Another move ended with a powerful shot from Lee Hodges, which just went past the post and hit the back stanchion.

Reading were caught offside on a number of occasions, breaking down other attacks. Also one good attack failed because Cureton was offside and so Butler couldn't play the ball to him. Butler instead played it backwards and everyone moaned at him!

Whether the late flurry meant that the players avoided a dressing-room shouting match I don't know, but as the second half started things did look different. For a start, John Mackie had replaced Barry Hunter, and secondly Orient attacked from the word go. Whitehead very soon had to make a decent save, diving low to his right.

A couple of things struck me in the second half. Igoe had a pretty decent game, but every time he got the ball he tried to go past the Orient full-back and failed. On Saturday against Port Vale he beat the defender every time, and quite comfortably too. I think this is most likely a comment on Port Vale, rather than on Igoe or on Orient's left back. The other is that although Martin Butler got through a lot of work chasing the opposition he just looks less sharp than he did when he joined us. Now Butler has something like minor deity status on this website, but if I was to get really worried I might think that he was learning the "just do enough" attitude prevalent among Reading players in recent years. The other possibility is that he still hasn't really got match-fit after missing the whole of pre-season.

Back to the game, and Orient took the lead. It was a fairly simple move - cross from the left and an unmarked player forced the ball home. Perhaps Whitehead might have done better, but by then the damage had been done.

Reading didn't really react to this, although Caskey nearly got an equaliser with a shot that just rolled past the post with the keeper standing and watching. In other attacks, Viveash got his head onto a corner, but the contact was so slight that the ball went off for a throw-in. Cureton also only just failed to get on the end of a cross from the right. He tried to hit it with his foot when he might have actually got there with his head.

But if anyone in the ground was surprised when Orient got the second, then I would be stunned. Again the ball came from the left (and that of course is the side defended by Andy Gurney). A Reading player got his foot to the ball and deflected it goalwards. A few years ago, Whitehead would just have dived on the ball, and that would have been the end of the attack. However, since the rule change, keepers get worried about such touches by defenders being classed as a backpass, and so Whitehead elected to just knock the ball out. Unfortunately he knocked it straight to an Orient attacker who put it back past him and into the net.

McIntyre and Smith replaced Caskey and Parkinson. This certainly improved our game, although the most obvious effect was that immediately after the Caskey subsitution, we got our first and only free-kick on the edge of the box. It was on the wrong side but Caskey nearly scored from a similar position against Stoke. As it was, a Hodges shot was deflected for a corner.

We had one other notable goal attempt. From a Neil Smith long throw the ball broke to the edge of the area where Andy Gurney unleashed a powerful 25-yard left-foot shot that went just over.

The fourth official signalled three minutes of time added on, which most people were annoyed at. It was obvious that we had lost and most of those still in the ground were thinking more about going home. However, this allowed two amusing incidents to take place. By now, Orient had the game won. Even if we got one goal back, they would have been able to slow things down enough to hang on. But one of their forwards decided to waste just a bit too much time and got booked. I was thinking how pleased his boss would be that that had happened when it got better. Another Orient player blocked us taking a quick free-kick (by now with less than a minute left) which turned out to be his second bookable offence. That means he'll be suspended for the first leg of the second round, because soon after the referee blew up and Orient went through.

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