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This part of the site is all about how I spend my spare time and what I do to relax. This section has been a bit rushed because my holiday time has run out. It will be expanded just as soon as I can and I promise piccies etc. will follow ASAP. Notice the masochistic trend!
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Reading FCNon-Premiership FootballReading FC LinksGolfCricket |
Much of my life seems to be spent searching for information / rumours about life surrounding the team that calls the Madjeski Stadium home. I am exiled a long way from home and have been for quite some time hence the net has proved to be a god-send because people still living in the town supply match reports and gossip which is the next best thing to actually being there.
I cannot supply up to date information about the team because I actually see so few matches in the flesh. For the best in Reading FC info go to the Links page.
In this section I want to describe what it's like to support a smaller football team. There are several things that Division 2 and 3 supporters do that Premiership followers don't have to think about:
Trying to find somewhere to see a game on the rare occasion that it might be on Sky TV. Here in Nottingham they would rather watch anything than a Nationwide League match [a friend and me went to 6 pubs without success trying to watch the Reading / Oxford derby].
Trying to see the goals from the weekend matches. If you do not have Sky TV, you're only chance to see these is to watch / video them in the middle of the night; Premiership goals seem to be shown every day.
Trying to find news about the team etc. If I did not have Internet access I would have few options open to me:
To have old local newspapers sent to me by kindly friends
To scour the Sunday papers for the possible few lines that makes up a Div 2 report
To check teletext again in a normally vain hope that there might be a line or two about my team
To spend ridiculously large amounts of money phoning Clubcall [a lot of money for very little].
This is probably a vast untruth but it often seems to me that supporters, or rather followers, of large teams do not care the same way that fans of smaller teams do. We accept things that Premier League fans today simply would not endure:
Standing in uncovered stands in the pouring rain
Using toilets that stink so badly that you have to hold your nose [at one ground we had this and were rained on at the same time].
The question then has to be asked, "Why do I do it?". The simple answer is that I love my footballteam. A fellow RFC fan [Mike C.] wrote:
"I’d still like to believe that most people who trek up the road to the stadium on a Saturday afternoon are doing it because they _have_ to (IYKWIM). Christ, after all the rubbish we’ve been watching for the last few seasons you’d have to be a passionate dedicated loon to keep going, wouldn’t you? And if - after paying the money, making the journey, putting up with your friends and colleagues taking the piss, usually watching rubbish football ....that’s not such a crime is it?
Anyway, once in a while you get a match like us vs. Wolves just after McGhee left. I’ll never forget that match and the atmosphere for as long as I live and the knowledge that if the circumstances are right it’ll happen again are part of what keeps me (and all other footie fans, I’d guess) going no matter how crappy it often is. It’s all part of the pain of being the support of any club. God knows I’d rather be into rugby, cricket or anything else that I could neatly shove into a box marked "don’t care but mildly interesting" but it just isn’t like that.
We are fools....but at least we’ve got a soul."
This is what it's like for us, you have a soul or you don't, you care or you don't but most of all those of us that are of the former opinions have one thing in common: hope. Even when things are really bad, and as a Reading supporter there have been a few of these, we remember great games when the crowd sang with one voice and the players were "fit to wear the hoops"and all was right with the world. At the time of writing, Reading are third from bottom in Division 2 and we feel pretty desperate but we still turn up and cheer and suffer but most of all we hope.
I must confess to being one of those 'sad' people who spoils a good walk by hitting a small white ball around a great expanse of grass of various lengths. In my defence I can only say that I am not very good and like most golfers I suffer at least as much as I enjoy; it is the singular most infuriating game.
[As time goes on you might get more detail on my triumphs and more frequent disappointments].
I play on and off for a cricket team called Wollaton Hall who are a social Sunday side. We play 40 overs a side games on a purely social basis. I am a batting all-rounder with two scores over 30 this year! [I think my omission in the test party this year was merely a tragic accident; after all they've tried every other player in the country.]
