| Competition | Date | Opponent | Venue | Result |
| Division 2 | Tuesday, 27th March (7.45pm) | Swindon Town | Away | Won 1-0 |
Reading goal: Cureton
Gamebreaker: Final whistle
Attendance: 9,674
Reading line-up: Whitehead,
Newman, Robinson, Parkinson, Whitbread, Hunter, Murty, Harper,
Butler, Cureton (Henderson), McIntyre
Subs not used: Howie, Jones, Caskey, Igoe
With it having rained all day, I arrived in Swindon as late as I possibly could to try to avoid yet another weather-related wasted trip. When I got to the ground, there were what seemed like thousands of Reading fans in queues snaking around the outside of the ground waiting to get in. Apparently the turnstiles only opened at ten to seven, although whether because of a late pitch inspection or in an attempt to reduce the wages paid to the turnstile operators, I know not.
The only change to the Reading line-up from the game the previous Friday was the one forced on Alan Pardew by Anthony Rougier's involvement in a World Cup qualifier. Jamie Cureton replaced Rougier with Darius Henderson filling the space on the bench.
Before the kick-off there was a minute's silence for a former Swindon player who had recently died. This was unfortunately interrupted by a group of Reading fans singing, "We are going up" but they did have a good excuse - they were outside the ground being escorted to the turnstiles by the local police, and could have had no idea that everyone inside was silent.
At the start of the game, it would have been difficult to pick out either of these sides as a team going for promotion. The match was played at a furious pace, with very little football on show. What passing there was came from the home side, as Reading's sole tactic in the first half was to play long balls forward to Cureton and Martin Butler. Far too often these balls just went out of play or were easily gobbled up by the home defenders putting us back under pressure.
With supposedly the best referee in the country, David Elleray, in charge of the game, we might have expected some decent officiating. However Elleray himself seemed not to be taking the game seriously, occasionally making really good spots of fouls that most refs would have missed, but at other times just looking to be in the centre stage himself. And if we thought Elleray was bad, then that was nothing compared to the linesman who was at the end we were defending. Time after time he allowed play to continue when Swindon forwards were clearly offside, although fortunately none of the attacks produced a goal. At the other end Reading (and particularly Cureton) were caught offside several times, although I have no reason to think that these were anything but the correct decisions.
Swindon's best early chance came from a free-kick on the edge of the area but their player hit it straight into the wall. Soon after that Butler got booked for complaining too much to the referee about a decision. The main significance of this became apparent later, because for the rest of the game Butler was holding back from making challenges after closing down defenders bringing out the ball. He's picked up a lot of yellow cards this season for such tackles and sensibly made sure that we were not reduced to ten men.
As the rain began to fall, the Reading fans on the open bank and probably those in the first few rows of the supposedly covered side stand started to get wet. The Swindon fans started singing, "You're getting wet, we're not" and those of us in the dry in the side stand heroically refrained from joining in. One other person getting wet was Martin Allen who as usual was prowling around the edge of the technical area. However, after one particularly bad foul on Graeme Murty, Allen's protests led to a telling-off from the referee and after that he stayed seated much more than usual. The thing was that the ref didn't look like he was even going to give a free-kick until Allen shouted, but then appeared to change his mind.
The game had calmed down by the middle of the half, and Reading started to exert some pressure whilst still giving the ball away far too often. We had several corners, and tried the standard routines. The one where a centre-back gets to the far post unmarked worked perfectly except for the fact that the ball was just too high for him to head back across goal. Then from a later corner (and for the first time that I can remember) Parkinson failed to lose his marker with his late run to the near post, and so couldn't get the correct angle on his header, which instead went wide.
Swindon had several attacks that looked threatening but ended either with shots wide, high or on a couple of occasions with decent saves from Phil Whitehead. After a couple of minutes of time added on, it was half-time with the score still goalless.
During the break I noticed a small group of Reading fans at the back of the open terrace singing continuously, although I couldn't actually hear a sound from them. Then I spotted one Reading fan in the end, wearing the 1979 Divison 4 Championship winning top (no, wait a minute - it's the current season's third strip, it's SO easy to get them confused) going round stirring up the fans in the front few rows. This then continued throughout the half, and was surprisingly effective. Given that we scored an early goal in the second half, it would be quite easy for Swindon fans to accuse us of only singing when we're winning, but in truth the noise began with the start of the second half.
The goal came from the first decent bit of football that we'd seen from Reading. We won the ball in midfield and released Butler down the right wing. He ran nearly to the byline and then pulled a dangerous ball across the face of goal. It eluded the goalkeeper and found Cureton waiting at the far post who just tapped it in. Right place. Right time. A typical Cureton goal.
Five minutes later it could have been two as a suicidal Swindon backpass found only Cureton on the edge of the area. The Swindon keeper had seen the problem and came rushing out. Cureton tried to lob him but didn't quite get the height allowing the keeper to block the shot. The irony was that because the goalkeeper jumped so high in the air, it would have been easy for Cureton to roll the ball along the ground and into an empty net.
We had long shots from Murty and Ricky Newman that failed to trouble the scorers (or indeed even the goalkeeper) but all the pressure at this stage was from Reading. Cureton had another good chance but this time fired over from close range. Much of the play was still very scrappy and a three-minute spell of head tennis in the middle of the field typified the game. However, Reading had the lead and the clock was running down quite quickly without much apparent threat from Swindon to get an equaliser.
As the game reached the last fifteen minutes, Swindon took off their right back and brought on a forward. This spurred them on and they started to move forward. There was one spell where they fired in about six shots towards our goal, all of which were blocked. I think it was Barry Hunter who gave the ball away initially, but who also got in the last block to put the ball out for a corner.
As we tried to slow the game down, Jim McIntyre was booked for time-wasting and was shortly followed by Cureton who saw yellow for violently disagreeing with a linesman's offside decision. Jamie was close to being in his own half when the ball was played, and in any event the last defender was just inside the Swindon half so it's very difficult not to agree with his assessment of the position. And remember that this was the same linesman who in the first half was perfectly happy to let every forward move go unchecked regardless of how far offside the Swindon forwards were.
Pardew sensibly brought on Darius Henderson for Cureton, given that we had gone back to mostly pumping long balls up front, although instead Henderson made an impression with a couple of runs where he outpaced the home defence.
In the last ten minutes, Swindon continued to attack and it felt as if they were permanently inside our penalty area. Phil Whitehead made a couple of decent saves, before pulling off one that was incredible. The Swindon player got the ball about three yards out from goal, took it on his chest, swivelled and fired in a shot. Despite having practically no time to react, Whitehead managed to stick out an arm and block the ball.
There were three minutes of added time - after the first two had passed, Swindon had a shot that was deflected away for a corner. The referee turned to the bench, signalled and blew his whistle. Many Reading fans started cheering, but he was only signalling for another ball! Whitehead caught the corner comfortably, though, and the real final whistle soon followed.
The huge travelling contingent celebrated with our players as the Swindon team trooped off in disbelief. It had not been a good Reading performance, but we had come away with the three points.
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