Basingstoke Town Football Club can today reveal that they are to host Reading Football Club in Barclays Premier League U.21 develpment matches. The Camrose ground will host fixtures from the prestigious development league, competitive matches run by the Barclays Premier League.
Speaking of the arrangement Basingstoke Town FC Director Lee Atkins said “We are delighted to be able to host Reading Football Club. We already enjoy a good working relationship with Reading, this allows us to take that relationship a step further and we are very excited at the prospect of having Premier League football players playing here at The Camrose. Although the league is given an under 21 title clubs are actually allowed to play up to three over-age players and an over-age goalkeeper so I’m sure that we’ll be seeing some established Premier League players as well as plenty of stars of the future coming to play at Basingstoke. We’ve worked hard as a club on this and it’s been in the pipeline for some time but as it’s governed by the Premier League we’ve had to jump through a few hoops to get it sorted. It’s going to provide the club with revenue, a lot of prestige in getting these fixtures on considering the calibre of teams that we will have visiting us and it will hopefully be a great attraction for the football fans in the town.”
Basingstoke Town manager Jason Bristow added “I think it will great for the club and the town to welcome Premier League footballers to The Camrose. Everyone has worked really hard to make this happen and I hope it will be the start of a very good relationship. We have Colin Barnes & Michael Gilkes here at Basingstoke already & they & others have further enhanced our relationship with Reading FC. These are competitive games in a league format and not friendlies so they should be really good to watch.
The fixtures are as follows;
Monday 2nd December Reading FC v Norwich City FC 7pm
Monday 16th December Reading FC v West Ham United 7pm
Monday 20th January Reading FC v Sunderland 7pm
Monday 10th February Reading FC v Manchester City 7pm
Monday 10th March Reading FC v Bolton Wanderers 7pm
All matches are priced as follows;
Adults £3
OAP’s and Under 16′s £2
Basingstoke Town FC & Reading FC season ticket holders £2
IN for a few of these.
Also, tomorrow night free entry to the Madejski for a game against QPR in the inaugural U21 cup.