| Competition | Date | Opponent | Venue | Result |
| Division 2 | Tuesday, 26th December (1pm) | Bristol Rovers | Away | Drew 2-2 |
Reading goals: N Smith, Parkinson
Gamebreaker: Final whistle
Attendance: 8,029
Reading line-up: Whitehead,
Newman, Robinson, Parkinson (Igoe), Viveash, Hunter, N Smith,
Caskey, Butler (Rougier), Cureton, Hodges
Subs not used: Howie, Mackie, Gurney
My last trip to the Memorial Ground was for our 6-0 FA Youth Cup 2nd round victory - I wasn't really expecting a repeat of that result, but with Bristol Rovers having failed to win a home game all season, we really should have been looking for three points from this game. Since that last visit, there is a new stand - well, there's a new roof covering about 300 terrace places for home fans. Certainly a club that is going places!
On getting into the ground, the first thing I had looked for was the position of the away dug-out - unlike last season, Pardew, Allen and the rest were located somewhere near the halfway line (rather than down next to the corner flag). Incredibly Reading named the same starting eleven, and the same five substitutes, as in our previous match. I bet that hasn't happened for a while.
Obviously the most newsworthy aspect of this match was Jamie Cureton's return to his old club. I didn't see any of the "Jamie Cureton - What a Bargain!" T-shirts, but then it was exceptionally cold (and the main reason this report was so severely delayed was the illness I contracted at some point on Boxing Day). In the opening stages of the game, Cureton had a couple of half-chances which he came nowhere near putting in the back of the net. It looked very much as if he was not planning on passing the ball very much in this game, and it also had a definite feeling of one of those matches where he wasn't going to score if we played for four hours.
Once the game had settled down, the home side looked more likely to score. They were helped by a referee who only seemed able to give free-kicks in one direction. After about half-an-hour, he gave a foul for a perfectly fair challenge by John Mackie. We defended against this extremely poorly, and Bristol Rovers' one remaining decent forward was able to get into the box and score with a shot across goal that looked as if it had taken some sort of deflection.
Fortunately, this woke us up, and for the remainder of the half we played our best football of the game. Cureton had managed another miss, before Neil Smith got his head to a Darren Caskey right-wing cross for the equaliser.
Moments, later we took the lead. This time it was a corner on the right - Caskey placed it on Phil Parkinson's head and he put a powerful header goalwards to score. Parky's late runs at these corners almost always seem to result in the defence failing to pick him up, and we've got several goals in this manner this season.
It was a real shame that it was half-time soon after that, as I am sure that we would have gone on to score more goals in that period. After the break, as so often, it was a different story. I don't know whether it was the half-time team talk from Pardew, or a change that the home side had made, but we appeared to be sitting back and looking for a 2-1 win. As if we haven't had enough lessons over the years that we are absolutely incapable of defending a one goal lead.
Despite this, Bristol Rovers didn't really threaten our goal for about the first 25 minutes of the half. The real turning point seemed to be after Phil Parkinson was stretchered off with what looked like a nasty injury. He had clashed with an opposition midfielder and landed awkwardly - it was certainly an accident rather than malicious, and in any event I don't know whether it was the challenge or the fall that casued the problem. After hitting the ground, Parky had just lain motionless for some minutes. The only people with equal lack of movement were the stretcher bearers, who just stood on the touchline looking whilst Reading players, home players and even match officials urged them to get onto the field. Eventually they did so, after being waved on by the doctor examining Parky. It looked like he had a neck brace fitted, but it was difficult to see with so many people surrounding him. We brought on Sammy Igoe to replace him. This whole incident had taken four minutes (remember that).
Igoe's first contribution was to get booked for time-wasting, which also meant giving up a further ten yards for the free-kick. I don't know if referees have an annual quota to give out of these ten yard advances, but today's official seemed to want to get in a full season's worth. On the other hand, it was difficult to argue with most of them.
The home side continued to attack and pulled level following another free-kick, although this one was clear enough as Smith upended a home player trying to shoot. The kick was right on the edge of our penalty area, and we'd seen one from a similar distance go about 20 yards high a few minutes previously. However, this one hit the inside of Whitehead's left-hand post, and bounced back along the goal-line. The Reading defenders all stood and watched, whilst three Bristol Rovers players rushed forward, and one was able to easily tap the ball over the line. At 2-2, and given the recent pattern of the game, we would all have certainly settled for a draw at this point.
However, we had a golden chance to win about five minutes before the end of normal time. In a fairly rare second-half attack, the ball fell kindly for Martin Butler on the edge of the area with no defenders that close. He shot quickly, but failed to get any real power on his left-foot shot which the keeper was able to dive and save fairly easily. Butler should really be scoring with that sort of opportunity and he was substituted almost immediately afterwards by Tony Rougier.
Within moments, everyything had changed. Neil Smith got the ball in midfield and managed to avoid a massive lunge by a home player that could easily have broken his leg. Incredibly the same player then got up and immediately repeated what can only be described as an assault. How Smith was able to walk after such a challenge, I have no idea. The tackle was so bad that a brawl resulted, with both Reading's centre-backs wading in. Once everything had calmed down, the referee sent off the original perpetrator (which surely no one could argue about). He also booked three players, two from Bristol Rovers (one being the goalkeeper who had to run 60 yards to get into the action!) as well as Adi Viveash. There's no doubt that he should also have booked Hunter, but there was a lot happening. The booked Bristol Rovers outfield player had already seen one yellow card, so that meant he was off as well.
When play restarted (with another 10 yard advancement which seemed a bit odd because none of the Bristol Rovers offences appeared to be dissent), the 90 minutes were up. About three minutes had been lost due to the brawl. So with Parky's injury (4 minutes), a brawl (3 minutes), two other substitutions (30 seconds each), and Reading indulging in time-wasting whilst the score was 2-1, we expected to see the time added on board showing 9 minutes or something like that. And we would get that time playing against nine men.
The fourth official walked over to the Reading bench and appeared to be apologising to Alan Pardew. Very odd, I thought, until I saw him hold up the board saying three minutes to be added on! At the point he did this, we had already played 90 seconds over, so suddenly we are down to our last chance. In fact during those 90 seconds there had already been two further home players booked for dissent (taking up more time of course).
The last of these had followed the referee awarding us a free kick 25 yards out from goal but at a fairly tight angle. With the dissent, the ball was again moved forward, this time into the area. That means that the free-kick is still direct, of course, but it does not become a penalty. Darren Caskey and Lee Hodges stood over the ball, with Hodges' left foot the obvious way to try to score from such a situation. Instead Caskey took it and never came close to getting the ball over the wall and back down to under the bar - really a waste in such a position.
Incredibly the referee then blew for full-time. Although he blew after almost exactly 48 minutes, there had been no more than one minute's actual play during the time added on. It was patently obvious that he had totally bottled the situation, and was only concerned about getting off the pitch in one piece. This he did, under heavy escort, before any of the players.
We had got one point from this game and Bristol Rovers had failed to win at home again, but we really should have had three. Obviously the main reason we failed to win was our own decision to sit back on a lead in the second half, but the officials have something to answer as well. The problem is that Bristol Rovers fans will moan for the rest of eternity about the referee who sent off two of their players - the reality is that both of them deserved to go and we still didn't get the chance to play against nine men. This is the third time this season that we have been totally screwed by the referee at an away game, and has probably cost us eight points in total. Hopefully some away side is going to really suffer at the MadStad as an inept biased official gives us everything all game, and wouldn't it be appropriate if it was Bristol Rovers?
News . Opposition . Reserves . Academy . Where Are They Now? . Columns . Kingsley . MadStad . Interactive . Links . Site Map