| Competition | Date | Opponent | Venue | Result |
| Division 2 | Saturday, 9th September (3pm) | Brentford | Home | Won 4-0 |
Reading goals: Cureton (3), Caskey
(pen)
Gamebreaker: Reading's second goal
Attendance: 10,222
Reading line-up: Whitehead,
Newman, Gurney (Haddow), Parkinson (Smith), Viveash, Hunter (Mackie),
Igoe, Caskey, Butler, Cureton, Hodges
Subs not used: Ashdown, McIntyre
A Reading player getting a hat-trick? A win by four clear goals? This is clearly a change from recent history. And yet I couldn't help thinking that we didn't really play that well, but instead that Brentford just gifted us the game.
The first shock was the team line-up. When the Reading team was read out at about 2.20, Matt Robinson was at left-back with Andy Gurney on the bench (even though I couldn't actually see Robinson taking part in the warm-up). By 2.55 Gurney was in the starting eleven and Alex Haddow had taken a place on the bench. Either Robinson picked up a very late injury, or we realised that his existing Achilles problem was just too bad for him to play, or else we're playing mind games with the opponents again. Much as I would like it to have been the last of these, I suspect it was the second reason that caused the change. Really Haddow would be the obvious replacement, but he would undoubtedly not have been mentally ready for the kick-off in such circumstances. And I must say that Andy Gurney, playing a completely unfamiliar role, did pretty well.
We had also made a positional change compared to recent games, with Lee Hodges playing wide left midfield and Darren Caskey in the centre. Whilst this worked today, I think that Brentford's 5-3-2 formation allows Caskey more time in the centre of midfield than he will get against most sides. It will be interesting to see whether it was just a tactical switch for these particular opponents.
At the start of the game, Brentford had some chances to take the lead. There was a goalmouth scramble where we just couldn't get the ball away, and then a corner. Soon after that Phil Whitehead made a fine save from a 30-yard shot that was dipping under the bar. But that was just a false dawn as far as Brentford were concerned, as from about 10 minutes on it was all Reading.
Cureton had two opportunities to score, and on another day we might have been looking back at these. Both of them were one-on-ones with the keeper and Cureton put the ball wide of the goal to the left, but neither were as simple as that makes them sound. For the first one Cureton had to really stretch to get the ball and did well to guide it even vaguely in the direction of the goal. The second one was when he ran onto a bouncing ball played over the top of the defence. The keeper came rushing out and was prepared to take the man if he couldn't get the ball. Under such pressure, Cureton's touch wasn't quite good enough to get the ball on target.
Minutes later, though, his more instinct in the six-yard box was enough to give us the lead. We won a corner on the left, and Caskey chipped it up to the near-post. This was one of the rare occasions when the first defender couldn't get his head to it, but it also went just over Barry Hunter's head. The second defender headed it out to the edge of the box, but only to Lee Hodges. (Do you remember the number of times over the last few years when we had no players waiting for such knock-downs on the edge of the box, and consequently lost possession? It's good to see that Hodges or one of the coaches has spotted the possibilities from such situations.) Hodges knocked the ball back in, the ball deflected off a defender and fell to Cureton's feet. Although facing away from goal he turned and put it in with his left foot.
Reading continued to attack, and we had a penalty appeal after Sammy Igoe was tripped in the box. He went over a bit too easily, I think. Still, it didn't matter that much when playing against this defence, as very soon they were in trouble again. We had a free-kick and played it into the area. Martin Butler received the ball, five yards from goal, but facing the wrong way. He tried to get it under control to turn and shoot, but instead just ended up juggling it. The Brentford keeper rushed towards him, pushed Butler and just as we were appealing for a penalty, the ball fell for Cureton to turn it into the net. Butler limped away from the goal - I don't know if he got caught by Cureton, but the injury must have been trivial.
At the end of the half, there were four minutes of injury time. Brentford actually got the ball into our penalty area with a minute left, but their attack came to nothing. We then played the ball out quickly to Cureton on the right, and he crossed it in for Butler. Again Butler couldn't quite get the ball under control at first, but just as he was about to shoot, a defender pole-axed him. Penalty and an automatic red card. Except that the referee took pity on the defender and didn't even book him! We probably didn't mind too much as Caskey put the penalty to the keeper's left and easily scored.
The second half was more of the same - at half-time, I worked out that the last hat-trick by a Reading player was by Trevor Morley. Although I couldn't remember exactly when it was, it was obviously a long time ago. Meanwhile Tony Rougier did the half-time draw and was interviewed briefly on the pitch. However, because the PA system is so useless I couldn't hear his answer to the question "When will you be back?"
In the second half itself, Cureton was clearly looking for that hat-trick. Although he put in a good cross from the right that Sammy Igoe got a header onto, he was generally not passing the ball as much as he could have done. On one occasion he got the ball on the left, near the edge of the penalty area, and beat about four defenders before they finally crowded him out. He just couldn't get the shot in, but there were some good passing options.
A lot of our game involved playing the ball over the top of Brentford's defence for Cureton or Butler to run onto. Brentford's only way of stopping it was to push up and claim for offside. In about five minutes, this happened three times, each one falling to Cureton.The first time he was clearly onside but given off, the third time was close and he was given off, but the second time, also close, he was given onside. Cureton controlled the ball, ran into the area and slotted the ball into the net for his hat-trick.
At this point, we started to ease off. Pardew made three substitutions one at a time, allowing the players coming off to get standing ovations (when was the last time Gurney got one?) and meaning that Alex Haddow made his first appearance of the season, at left-back. Lee Hodges had a good long shot that went just over, and Brentford managed some half-hearted attacks that came to absolutely nothing.
We in the East Stand contented ourselves with asking various people what the score was. Most of the Reading players and bench seemed to be able to tell us but there was only deafening silence from the direction of Brentford coach and Reading reject Terry Bullivant. The old favourite chant "Taxi for Bullivant" was added to "Terry, Terry, what's the score?". At one point, I also heard a chant of "Ronny, Ronny what's the score?" from the Brentford fans, aimed at their chairman and manager Ron Noades. He didn't seem to want to reply, either.
After three minutes of injury time, the referee blew up and we had secured a comfortable win. Cureton made a bee-line (bad pun intended) for the ref to make sure that he got the ball, and then triumphantly held it in two hands towards the East Stand. I can remember him doing something similar towards the South Stand a while back but only using one hand. In any event, it's quite promising that he scores enough hat-tricks to have changed his celebration!
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