| Competition | Date | Opponent | Venue | Result |
| LDV Vans Trophy 2nd round | Tuesday, 9th January (7.45pm) | Hereford United | Away | Won 2-1 |
Reading goals: Cureton, McIntyre
Gamebreaker: Reading's second goal
Attendance: 1,693
Reading line-up: Howie, Murty,
Gray, Jones, Viveash, Hunter, Igoe (Gurney), Caskey, Cureton (Henderson),
Rougier, McIntyre
Subs not used: Whitehead, Haddow, Mackie
"Under a blood-red sky"
Well, despite all the photos in the papers on Wednesday morning, the moon over Hereford never did turn red, although incredibly the skies remained clear, and the away fans had a perfect view of the whole eclipse.
"A crowd has gathered, black and white"
The Hereford fans were indeed bedecked in black and white, but the numbers turning up for games in the early rounds of the LDV Vans Trophy can hardly be described as a crowd.
"Arms entwined, the chosen few"
The "chosen few" obviously refers to the select band of Reading fans making the trip, although there didn't seem to be a great deal of linking arms going on.
"The newspaper says, says, says 'It's true, it's true!'"
Ah, yes. The newspaper says that we won!
Reading made eight changes from the line-up on Saturday. Two were enforced, with Matthew Robinson out injured and Phil Parkinson suspended. Instead we had Stuart Gray and Keith Jones, neither of whom impressed me during the game. A swap in goalkeepers was always on the cards, with Scott Howie not having previously seen one minute of action this season. And the return after suspension of Adi Viveash for John Mackie was also to be expected. The remaining changes saw Martin Butler, Neil Smith, Lee Hodges and Ricky Newman replaced by Tony Rougier, Sammy Igoe, Jim McIntyre and Graeme Murty, with Darren Caskey switching to a more central role. Apart from scoring an own goal, the four replaced players just mentioned produced very little on Saturday, so I wonder if we could say that they were dropped?
Although parts of Hereford were icy as early as four in the afternoon, and the night was extremely cold, the pitch seemed fine. This was a pleasant surprise - perhaps Hereford can get lots of cheap fertiliser from the nearby cattle market, and so end up with a good quality surface.
From the start, it was clear that Reading were the better side, but we were unable to show that in the danger area. We had possession but never quite got in the telling cross or through-ball. There is no doubt that this would have left us badly exposed against a better side. It was surprising that whilst Graeme Murty was able to ghost past Millwall players as if they weren't there, he didn't once manage to evade the first tackle from the part-time Conference players.
The first good chance came halfway through the half from a cross which Viveash headed onto the top of the bar (I thought it was Viveash and I'm sticking to that, even though others say it was McIntyre). Only a few minutes later we did take the lead - a good through ball from midfield came to Jamie Cureton on the edge of the area. He turned sharply and fired the ball goalwards. It hit the bar and went into the net. "We're going to win the van," we sang, unable to come up with a suitable rhyme for Cardiff to use in the "Que sera sera" song.
Only a few minutes later we were two up. This time Tony Rougier took the ball down the right, went past two defenders and got to the byline. The byline! Just like we've all been saying for the last two months! He crossed the ball and McIntyre was able to easily tap the ball into the net.
Like previous games, it seemed that Reading had pulled out all the stops for a short ten-minute spell, scoring more-or-less at will in that period, and then eased off again. I'd like to see a return to some of the home games earlier in the season when we played at full pace for much longer periods. In this match, it was 2-0 at half-time, and the scoreboard statistics said that we'd had two attempts on goal (Hereford two, as well ) and two on target (Hereford none). So obviously they didn't count the header that hit the bar as an attempt (unless they added it to the Hereford total, because I can't remember the home side having one attempt, let alone two).
At half-time, Darius Henderson and Alex Haddow warmed up by attempting to pass the ball to each other from progressively shorter distances until they found one that worked. Phil Whitehead just sat in the dugout and the other two Reading subs were nowhere to be seen at all. The moon obstinately stayed non-red.
In the second half, Reading played at something like half-pace. There were occasional probes forward, with McIntyre having a reasonable chance to score another, but putting the ball wide. Stuart Gray had a shot that went off by the corner-flag - actually, it wasn't as bad as that made it sound, because he did shoot from a very tight angle. Our best chance came when a defender cleared a McIntyre shot off the line, with the keeper beaten. That move only came about because the same defender lost the ball, but he raced back to successfully try and save his team. Darius Henderson came on for Cureton, but didn't really get into the game.
At the other end, Hereford put us under some pressure, but didn't look like scoring until a defensive mix-up gifted them a goal. A hopeful long-ball was easily won by Viveash, who headed it back to where Scott Howie was standing. Unfortunately by now Howie had rushed out to try and catch the ball and it went over him. A forward was able to get to the ball and put it into the net. Howie and Viveash had a heated discussion about whose fault it was, and those people who had been wondering whether Howie should replace Whitehead as our first-choice keeper suddenly remembered why we bought Whitehead in the first place.
Roared on by the not-at-all massed ranks behind the goal, Hereford looked for an equaliser. They did manage to test Howie once more, when he came out quickly and was able to dive onto the ball after an attempted clearance had ricocheted off a Hereford player. There was an attacker nearby who must have been offside, but the linesman kept his flag down and it was just as well that Howie was alert.
Reading held on without any further scares, so we progress to the next round of this competition. And of course all season we have said that the LDV Vans Trophy is the main cup competition! Actually, there is one very good reason why it is worth getting to the final - some people (and I am certainly not one of them) think that our only hope of promotion is via the play-offs. Well, if we were in the play-off final, it would certainly be to our advantage to have already got a game at the Millennium Stadium under our belts.
"And so we are told this is the golden age"
Perhaps not quite yet, methinks.
Lyrics from "New Year's Day" by U2, reprinted entirely without permission.
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