| Competition | Date | Opponent | Venue | Result |
| Friendly | Wednesday, 2nd August (7.30pm) | Maidenhead United | Away | Drew 1-1 |
Reading goal: Scott
Attendance: 309
Reading line-up: Gosby, Codner, Stanley, Longfellow, Hall (Stamp), Lockwood (O'Hara), Tyson, Evers, Forrester (Brown), Scott, Griffiths (Nazri)
[Note: In a piece of stunning incompetence, I deleted the report I had previously published and discovered I had no back-up of it. Fortunately it was one of the few games at which I made notes, and so I have reconstructed the report, hopefully without adding too much based on hindsight.]
Reading's line-up included four trialists (Winston Griffiths, Scott Forrester, Mickey Longfellow, and James Hall) as well as guest Robert Codner. With another trialist, Abdul Nazri, on the bench and a squad containing several Academy players, we might have expected Reading to look a bit disjointed, and that certainly proved to be the case.
Maidenhead had the first two shots of the game, but put both wide. Our first decent attack started with Adam Lockwood, who brought the ball out of defence with a fine run. It initially came to nothing, but the ball fell for Nathan Tyson who shot well wide. After that, Griffiths tried to impress with some trickery but also had a chance where he was put straight through the middle. He didn't react quickly enough and a defender got back to clear.
James Hall was impressing, particularly in attacking situations. He had one header from a corner that went just over, and then from a later corner the keeper only just managed to reach the ball and punch it away from Hall's head. Maidenhead had two more chances, but on these occasions blasted the ball well over the goal.
The last significant action of the half was also the closest we came to a goal. From another corner, Keith Scott rose and flicked the ball towards goal. It went wide but Tyson so nearly got a foot to the ball in a position where he could have easily turned it into the net.
At the beginning of the second half, Maidenhead took the lead from another move from a corner. The ball beat everyone in the defence and fell for a forward to tap it home. The game got more scrappy and Maidenhead had half-chances to stretch their lead, but instead we got an equaliser. A right-wing cross was flicked on and Scott was at the far post to knock the ball home.
We had two more chances to snatch it. Forrester just failed to make contact with a low cross at the far post with the keeper nowhere, and then Scott got onto the end of a cross but put it just wide. Maidenhead also had attacks, but none of them came to anything much. A draw was a fair enough result, with the home team being slightly the better.
Of the five trialists on show, only James Hall impressed me. Compared to the previous night at Kingstonian Griffiths was a disappointment. Oddly enough, Codner had a pretty solid game, but I doubt if he would be able to make the step up to Division 2 level.
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