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2000/01 Reports

Reading goals: Butler, Cureton, McIntyre
Gamebreaker: Reading's third goal
Attendance: 4,428

Reading line-up: Whitehead, Newman, Gurney, Parkinson, Viveash, Williams (Jones), McIntyre, Caskey, Butler (Mackie), Cureton (N Smith), Hodges
Subs not used: Howie, Murty

Reading showed that we were a class above Rotherham in this match. Despite being away from home and against a team highly placed in the table, there was a big gap between the two sides.

The team line-up showed that it was Adie Williams who replaced the suspended Barry Hunter, with Keith Jones making the bench. Also, Scott Howie was a sub for the first time since his comeback from injury. Reading played the usual 4-4-2 formation, but with McIntyre and Hodges both on the left of midfield (McIntyre wider than Hodges).

We could have had the lead as early as thirty seconds. Jim McIntyre received the ball in an advanced position on the left side, produced a wonderful bit of skill to beat his man and headed for goal. The Rotherham defender just pulled him back, and got booked. There were other defenders in the centre of the goal, but at a later time in the game this might still have resulted in a red card. The free-kick came to nothing.

The next major attack was at the other end, with Phil Whitehead making a magnificent save to tip a curling shot over the bar. After that scare, Reading stepped up a gear and dominated the match for the next 20 minutes or so. During this time, we also took the lead. Darren Caskey played a nice pass out to Ricky Newman who was advancing strongly down the right wing. Newman crossed and the ball was headed into the air by either a defender or a Reading attacker, both of whom jumped together. It fell to Martin Butler, who made no mistake placing a low left-foot shot to the keeper's left and into the net.

Although Reading had much of the play in this period, we didn't manage to create clear chances, and wasted several opportunities from free-kicks. We have this routine with kicks about 50 yards from goal, where we play the ball to the point where the 18-yard box meets the goal-line. There are no defenders in that area, and the idea is that one Reading player will make a late run in that direction. At worst he should have a chance to win a header against one defender. The first time we tried this at Rotherham, Ricky Newman didn't make the expected run and the ball went out harmlessly for a goal-kick. The second time, on the other side of the pitch, Lee Hodges made the run but didn't win the ball. (And we tried it again one time in the second half when we won the ball but didn't profit from it.)

I don't know if this is just natural bias, but Rotherham seemed to be getting more than their fair share of free-kicks and the referee really annoyed the Reading fans by awarding Rotherham a penalty after about 25 minutes. They had a long-throw expert who could really power the ball in, and on this occasion Andy Gurney pulled the shirt of the attacker he was marking. Gurney really did pull the shirt but if a referee gives one decision like that he should give all of them, which means 30 penalties a game. In any event, I don't think we can really complain about the penalty, although it was particularly annoying when a Reading reject put it past Whitehead.

Rotherham decided to look for another penalty, having no doubt worked out that no side has scored at home to Reading in any other fashion for a month. This time one of their defenders pushed up for a set-piece and tangled with Williams. The Rotherham player fell over, the referee waved play on and Williams turned round to shout complaints at the player. This is when farce took over. Untouched by human hand, the Rotherham player threw himself flat to the ground clutching his face. The referee (who received no obvious help from the nearby linesman) had no chance of seeing the incident, but managed to get the right decision by not giving a penalty and speaking at length to the home player.

At half-time it was still 1-1. As part of the half-time entertainment, boxing's cruiserweight world champion Johnny Nelson was introduced to the crowd. He was only there to try to sell some more tickets for his up-coming fight, but I was still impressed.

Reading came out for the second half, but Rotherham didn't - well, not for a while anyway. I reckon that we had held up the start of the game with some delaying tactics (given how long the Rotherham run-out song was playing before anyone actually appeared from the tunnel), and my best guess is that Rotherham tried to play the same game at the start of the second half.

It didn't work, because right at the start of the half Jamie Cureton got through on goal and chipped the ball over the keeper. Unfortunately he didn't get enough power on it, allowing a defender to clear the ball off the line. I'd like to tell you more about how the move started, but some pillock was pushing past me to get to his seat after going to the refreshment stall at half-time.

Fortunately he was not in my way three minutes later when Jamie Cureton scored the sort of goal that possibly even Paul Brayson might have been able to tuck away. The ball was played over the top to the edge of the area. The goalkeeper came out to meet it and one defender ran back to cover with Cureton in close attendance. The defender did the right thing by leaving the ball, but incredibly the goalkeeper did the same! They then ran into each other, allowing Cureton to run forward to tap the ball into the net. (On further reflection, Brayson would not have scored that goal - for a start, he wouldn't have bothered to chase the first ball and so wouldn't have been there; and secondly, faced with an open net he would probably have taken so long that a defender would have got back to dispossess him.)

Reading fans celebrated the goal, and the Rotherham stewards decided to eject a fan for doing so. His mates rightly protested about this, which led to a general scuffle with some police arriving at a very leisurely pace. They then arrested someone else, but what they should have done was arrested two of the stewards, who had caused the entire problem all on their own.

Rotherham didn't ever look like they were going to get back into the game, and Alan Pardew had obviously decided that two goals were enough as he brought on Neil Smith for Cureton, with McIntyre moving up front. Smith's presence on the pitch solidified the midfield but also meant that we resorted to his long throws as our major tactic for the rest of the game, despite getting nothing from any of them.

It was when we played the ball on the ground that we looked most effective and Jim McIntyre mised another opportunity to score when yet again he was hauled down after getting through the defence into a promising position. Again there were other defenders in the vicinity that allowed the defender (a different one this time) to stay on the pitch and again the free-kick came to nothing.

A few minutes later, we took the ball down the left and crossed it to the edge of the six-yard box. McIntyre was in the middle, completely unmarked, and very deliberately placed his header into the corner of the goal. It hit the post and went in. At 3-1 the game was safe and we made a double substitution. John Mackie replaced Adie Williams, who had had a decent game without ever being at his best, and Keith Jones came on instead of Martin Butler. We switched to a 4-5-1 formation. (Technically, Mackie replaced Butler and Jones replaced Williams, because that is how we made the substitutions, but obviously it was Mackie that went into the back four.) The Rotherham fans also felt that the game was over, because with still 12 minutes left, large numbers of them started leaving.

Keith Jones was only on the pitch for about fifteen minutes, but in that time he looked extremely assured and should be a positive acquisition to the team. Presumably he will replace Phil Parkinson fairly soon - that might be how Parkinson sees it as well because he tried execptionally hard in those last few minutes to score a goal. He had a couple of shots where normally he would probably have picked out another player, but both went wide.

There were four minutes of injury time at the end of the game, but given that we weren't really pushing and Rotherham had no idea how to get through our defence, there were never going to be any more goals. At the final whistle, the players all gathered in front of the joyful Reading fans to wild applause.

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