| Competition | Date | Opponent | Venue | Result |
| Division 2 | Tuesday, 20th February (7.45pm) | Oldham Athletic | Away | Won 2-0 |
Reading goals: Butler, Cureton
Gamebreaker: Reading's second goal
Attendance: 4,160
Reading line-up: Whitehead, Murty,
Newman, Jones (Hodges), Whitbread, Hunter, Parkinson, Caskey,
Butler, Cureton, McIntyre (Robinson)
Subs not used: Howie, Igoe, Rougier
This must rank as one of the best performances from Reading this season. Against an in-form, rested side who are familiar with their own quagmire of a pitch, we produced an excellent all-round performance to take all three points. If there was a real difference between the two sides it was the fact that we have goalscorers like Martin Butler and Jamie Cureton able to take chances presented to them.
The starting eleven showed two changes from Saturday, with Barry Hunter returning in place of Adi Viveash (who presumably failed to recover from the slight knee injury he picked up on Saturday, and Keith Jones coming in for Sammy Igoe, which was presumably tactical.
I must mention the pitch again - a large chunk in the middle had been resurfaced and looked vaguely green, but the remainder was a mixture of white and brown. The white looked like frost but instead was the moisture retained on the surface from the persistent drizzle that Oldham had had for the three hours before the game. Most pitches would easily drain that amount of water, but there's obviously something different about Oldham's. The brown was the mud, particularly at each end where there were divots missing everywhere. With light rain continuing to fall as the match began, it was clear that the surface was only going to get worse.
The match started exactly how we would have wanted, with Reading opening the scoring after three minutes. Butler received the ball on the edge of the area, turned and shot, and the ball just crept inbetween the goalkeeper's dive and the right-hand post.
In the next few minutes, we could have been three up and looking for a repeat of the 5-0 scoreline at Madejski Stadium. However, Cureton hit the side netting after beating the defence but drifting a little too wide, and then a Buter cross from the right was too close to the keeper when Cureton was unmarked at the far post.
We continued the pressure with a large number of corners. We had three in succession and then soon after another two. The best chance from these came with a near-post header similar to Phil Parkinson's goal at Brentford, but this time the keeper managed to stop it. From another attack Darren Caskey had a shot that went inches wide.
Whilst this was all going on at the far end of the ground, Oldham had hardly threatened the Reading goal. Their attacks down the left were getting past Caskey and Graeme Murty fairly easily, but our two centre-backs dealt with everything comfortably enough. The only real scare was when an Oldham player fell over in the area under pressure from Hunter - they'd already tried a few dives and got nothing, but this one looked as if it was a foul. Their own fault for crying wolf too often, I think.
Just before half-time it looked as if we had scored a second. Butler broke quickly down the right, and had two Reading players in the middle waiting for the cross. He picked out Cureton, but he was a bit too slow to get a shot in and it was blocked. The ball fell nicely for Butler who knocked it into the net, but as he was practically on the goal-line the linesman flagged for offside.
In injury time, we did get the second goal. It was another break, with Jim McIntyre playing the ball out to Butler. He played it across the field to Cureton who took it forward past his marker and comfortably shot past the Oldham goalkeeper. This was exactly what we needed. The half-time whistle went very soon after the kick-off.
The second half was quite a strange affair. Much of the play was scrappy as Reading deliberately broke the game up and stopped Oldham from getting into any sort of rhythm. Much of the play was in our half but Oldham managed to create no chances at all, and Phil Whitehead did not have to make a save. The only way in which he was tested was from a few crosses, one of which he had to punch, and that was it. Oldham also managed a couple of shots that went eceptionally wide.
Oldham's fans knew that they weren't going to score and concentrated on appealing for penalties on a regular basis. I don't think that even one of them justified an appeal, and in fact their chief diver was substituted twenty minutes from the end. Reading also failed to construct any attacks worthy of the name, as we failed to keep the ball for any length of time. Not to be outdone by the home players, Jamie Cureton had one shot that ended up at the corner-flag.
As the game reached its end, the referee began to succumb to the pressure from the home fans and started booking our players. We had four booked - the first was Adrian Whitbread who dummied a free-kick because Oldham had been playing an offside trap when we kicked it forward. The referee decided that that was time-wasting and on this occasion he might have been correct.
Next Phil Parkinson got elbowed in the centre of the pitch and was booked for his trouble! I can only assume that he said something to the referee who took no action at all for the original offence. For the remainder of the match, Parkinson won everything that came anywhere near him, and on occasion it appeared that the home players were even getting out the way when he went up for a header because they knew how angry he was.
The next player to suffer at the hands of our latest incompetent ref was Caskey. He was taken out very late right in front of the linesman and was then pulled down after he stood up. The linesman flagged, and awarded a free-kick to Oldham, whilst Caskey got booked. Finally the same linesman gave an Oldham goal-kick when we should clearly have had a corner, and Butler was booked, again presumably for something he said.
These four bookings had one good effect - they continued to help break up the game, and when we reached injury time the board only said three minutes so the tactics had obviously worked. The referee actually played five minutes over, but even though Oldham attacked for much of that time, the result was never in doubt.
As it happened, some of the other results went our way as well, allowing us to actually make progress up the League table. If we can play like this in most of our remaining games, then we are going to continue in that direction.
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