| Competition | Date | Opponent | Venue | Result |
| Division 2 | Saturday, 17th February (3pm) | Peterborough United | Home | Drew 1-1 |
Reading goal: Cureton
Gamebreaker: Final whistle
Attendance: 10,342
Reading line-up: Whitehead, Murty,
Newman, Parkinson, Viveash, Whitbread, Igoe, Caskey (Hodges),
Butler, Cureton, McIntyre (Robinson)
Subs not used: Howie, Jones, Rougier
You know, not too long ago Reading had a player nicknamed "Skittles" who spent large portions of a game throwing himself onto the floor and never getting a free-kick for it. Why is it that when the same player does exactly the same in a game against Reading, the referee awards his club a free-kick on practically every occasion, and even dishes out a second yellow card for one of the dives?
Before the match Simieon Howell was introduced to the crowd and rightly got a good reception. As you will know if you've visited this website before, England Under-15s are playing two games next week, and Simieon is in the squad. The stadium announcer said that the games would be on Sky Sports, which is news to me (and they certainly don't appear in Sky's listings). If the games are televised, then details will appear on the Internationals page of this website.
Also before the game, I noticed that all of the stewards wearing dayglo yellow coats were issued with orange "Tango-squad" jackets. I wondered why until I saw the yucky green colour of Peterborough's shirts - let's face it, if your team's shirt colour clashes with the stewards you know that your club's marketing department should be dismissed en bloc.
Reading named the same starting eleven as for the Brentford game, but Matthew Robinson took one of the places on the bench. Whilst this made sense, it is all a bit harsh on Barry Hunter, who has found himself relegated to the bench and then out of the 16 completely over two games, despite having taken part in three consecutive matches when we kept a clean sheet.
We started the game brightly, and it was clear that the players were feeling confident of a victory. Peterborough had two tall centre-backs who seemed fairly adept at stopping moves, but we still managed to have most of the play and to look threatening. In this period, our best chance was when Jamie Cureton shot wide after typical Martin Butler play had won us the ball in a dangerous position. Despite our attacks we didn't really test the keeper, though. The only time he was really called on was to catch a Darren Caskey free-kick but that was a very comfotable save.
About halfway through the half, we were attacking down the left, and Caskey tried to switch play to the right wing by passing to Sammy Igoe. The ball didn't quite reach Igoe, but Cureton won it from the Peterborough defender and put the ball out to Igoe. Sammy ran forward a few yards and crossed to where Cureton had made a forward run. With that goal poacher's instinct, Jamie flicked his header towards the goal, and it looped over the tall keeper's despairing dive and into the net.
All it needed at that point to win the game and end up in fourth place was another goal, and a few minutes later it looked as if we had got it. In a quick break (and that's something we haven't see enough of just recently), Cureton played the ball out to Butler on the left who crossed back into the middle for Igoe to knock the ball home. Unfortunately Igoe was given offside. From my viewpoint high up at that end of the Maurice Evans Stand, I should be easily able to tell you whether it was offside or not. However, I have to say that I don't really know - I think that the linesman probably got it right.
We played out the time to the interval without really threatening again - at half-time Peterborough made a substitution and the game completely transformed. It appeared that Reading's players had decided that they had already done enough to win, and that therefore they didn't really need to turn up for the second half. Against a really poor team like Bristol Rovers, they might have been right, but a side coached by Barry Fry will always be looking to get something out of a game.
What this meant in practice is that we were on the back foot whilst the away side pushed forward looking for an equaliser. Their strategy could have backfired - if we'd picked up another goal on the break, we would probably have gone on and won comfortably - but instead Peterborough got the benefits of actually trying to get something out of the game.
The rot had started to set in when Jim McIntyre correctly got a booking for sticking a foot out and blocking a free-kick when not more than a couple of yards away. A few minutes later, Peterborough won a free-kick in a dangerous position after a professional foul by Adi Viveash. Viveash was booked and was saved from getting a straight red by the fact that this action was too wide for it to be considered anything like a goalscoring chance. However, we failed to defend the kick properly (if at all) and conceded a soft goal from an unchallenged header.
Two minutes later it got much worse. This time Viveash looked to be the victim of a Skittles diving incident but again the referee gave a free-kick and showed the yellow card. This meant that Viveash was off and we were down to ten men. I don't think the referee got it right - I think it was a dive - but if there was a foul there, then it was worth a yellow card.
We took off Jim McIntyre and brought on Matthew Robinson with Ricky Newman switching to centre-back. Newman played there against Bristol City in October after Adie Williams went off injured and did pretty well, so I wasn't too concerned about that. Also, it was very good to see Robinson back from his latest injury. Leaving Cureton and Butler up-front signalled that we were still going to be looking for a win
The referee had already infuriated Reading fans with a number of his decisions (which I emphasise was down to incompetence rather than bias) when he failed to book a Peterborough player for kicking the ball away after the whistle had blown. Not exactly the same offence as the one committed by McIntyre but essentially the same sort of thing.
Although we had looked for a winner soon after being reduced to ten men, it was clear that we had subsequently changed our tactics and settled for a point. This was obviously on the instructions of the management and I think it was another mistake. For a start, our ten men were still better than their eleven, and secondly we would only have risked one point whilst seeking an extra two. Winning games (whilst losing some) instead of drawing is how we got to the top of the table earlier in the season, after all. And too many draws is what cost Wigan promotion last season. As part of our change of approach, Lee Hodges came on in place of Caskey.
Despite this, we did still fashion a couple of opportunities. Jamie Cureton had a good long-range shot that the keeper stopped and knocked straight back to Igoe, but Igoe blazed the ball over. In any event, the linesman had given Igoe offside, which was probably another officiating error but fortunately had no impact.
There was also an excellent passing move down the right side between Igoe, Cureton and Graeme Murty. This ended with a cross and a shot blocked, but was exactly the sort of play I would like to see more often. Our players are capable of it and very few defences in this division can stop it.
There was a worrying moment when Adrian Whitbread went down injured, but after treatment he was able to play on. Losing yet another central defender through injury really would be a disaster.
There were three minutes of time added on, but we never looked like snatching a winner during that period. Instead a pointless Sammy Igoe deliberate handball (for which he was rightly booked) on the edge of our area presented Peterborough with a final chance from a free-kick. It went just over the bar, and possibly a bit wide as well.
The referee blew the final whistle - I don't know how often I've used the phrase "throwing points away" this season, but this game saw us get rid of another two that our players obviously didn't want.
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