| Competition | Date | Opponent | Venue | Result |
| FA Cup 2nd round | Saturday, 9th December (3pm) | York City | Away | Drew 2-2 |
Reading goals: Newman, Butler
Gamebreaker: Final whistle (although it really should have been
our second goal)
Attendance: 2,926
Reading line-up: Whitehead,
Newman, Robinson, Parkinson, Viveash, Mackie, Jones, Igoe (Gurney),
Butler, Cureton (Rougier), Hodges
Subs not used: Howie, Hunter, N Smith
Having been told at 9:30am that the game was on, I arrived in York confident that the match would have been called off whilst I was travelling. Taking the bridge over the river and seeing road signs half-submerged in the floods did nothing to change my mind at all! Nevertheless the weather was sunny at this point, and when I got to the ground I found out that the match really was going ahead.
Looking at the pitch during the players' warm-up, there were a couple of very soft patches in the penalty area - strangely out to the sides rather than around the goal area. In one of those patches, Adi Viveash nearly lost his boot, as his foot sank right down to the ankle! But overall the pitch looked adequate, and in fact during the game there were no serious problems. The worst I noticed were a couple of very dead bounces, but they didn't affect key passages of play.
The Reading squad training before the match was noticeable for the absence of Darren Caskey. Ricky Newman had taken Andy Gurney's place in the team, and Gurney had replaced Caskey on the bench. Not the sort of pitch where Caskey would expect to excel, but I still think we shall hear more about this during the coming week.
Almost immediately from the kick-off we could have been a goal down, as a York forward took the ball throught the centre of our defence and Phil Whitehead had to make a diving save. The York player had handled the ball to get that far but the referee hadn't seen it, something that did not bode well for the rest of the tie.
The first half was a truly uninspiring affair. Every Reading move seemed to end with an offside flag, both Martin Butler and Jamie Cureton being at fault. York clearly had little idea how to play football, and so a 0-0 score at the break was no shock at all. There were a few chances at either end, but nothing to write home about. The most entertaining incidents were the attempts by a freakish York player to head the ball - he often jumped in the air when the ball was nowhere nearby, and also managed to put one decent headed chance over the bar just before half-time.
I reckon that during the interval our players got a bit of a roasting because the second half started with a bang. After a couple of attacks that came to nothing, we won a free-kick just outside the area. With neither Caskey nor Gurney on the pitch at this point, and the ball just to the right of goal (from the attacking viewpoint), the obvious choice was for Lee Hodges to curl the ball over the wall. Instead, the ball was touched so that it was slightly wider of the goal, allowing Ricky Newman to blast a shot around the side of the wall and inside the post. All those Caskey free-kicks, and it turns out that both our right-backs are experts as well!
With a one goal lead, Reading continued to press and a few minutes later we put York under some pressure after a move down the left wing with Robinson involved. His cross was cleared but only as far as Keith Jones on the corner of the box. Jones could have put over a cross, or possibly even tried a speculative shot, but instead he wrong-footed several York defenders by playing a lovely ball back out to Robinson. His low cross was turned goalwards by Butler, and went into the net off a defender's boot.
At 2-0 the game looked over, and we had chances in the following minutes to completely kill it off. Instead we lost our way somehow, ended up trying to waste time, and let York back into the game. I've said it before and I'll say it again - if there is one team in the country that should realise the danger of sitting back on a two goal lead, it is Reading.
In this game, York sensed that they had a chance and started to throw players forward. Whitehead had to make a couple of comfortable diving stops but then was unable to get near to a shot from close range. The opportunity to shoot only arose after our defence had back-pedalled instead of trying to dispossess the York midfielder bringing the ball forward.
We tried more time-wasting, and Whitehead even got booked for delaying the taking of a goal-kick. However, it was to no avail as with fifteen minutes left a York player took the ball forward, again unchallenged, and hit a piledriver from some distance that went in off the bar.
At this stage I was even concerned that we might lose, as it was now York looking dangerous. However, Reading were able to step up their game slightly, and remove the threat. Quite why we couldn't have managed that at 2-0 is beyond me.
As it was, York were left holding on after their number 7 was sent off for his second yellow card offence. Both of his cards were for bad late challenges, the second one on Adi Viveash. He also had some sort of altercation with Jones on the way off the pitch - now the suspension won't come into effect for two weeks, so that confrontation might be worth looking out for in the replay.
With the home side down to ten men, Reading were easily able to hold out for the closing minutes, but although we tried to attack we failed to put any serious pressure on the York goal. The game therefore ended as a draw.
The fact is that we should have won this game at a canter, and I am not too happy about seeing our players stroll through games like this. It brings on bad attitudes that then appear in League games. We only played really hard for about ten minutes of this match, in which time we scored twice and might have had more. Hopefully there will be no such similar slackness in the replay.
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