Guardian Sport today

[papereyes]

All clubs are plastic except about 20.

Not all of those 20 are in the top flight. This is why teams go on and on and on and on and on about it.

[PEARCEY]

The overuse of the term ‘plastic’ by those who attended football pre-Italia 90/inception of the Premier League is entirely tiresome, as if every club in this day and age hasn’t got its own large fanbase of middle class replica shirt bedecked families. Far too much handwringing on HNA on the subject; personally, I find the constant references to such to actually be far more embarrassing than those ‘plastics’ themselves you so detest.

RFC is no better or worse than anywhere else; seriously, some of you should attend some away matches at some time because you will never fail to be unimpressed by the lack of ‘atmosphere’ elsewhere, I promise you. Take Newcastle, the self-styled home of the best football supporters in the universe, they had to give out free scarves to whip them into anything approaching a frenzy. Chelsea, bless them, and their free flags and I give you tomorrow’s opposition…..Arsenal, who are handing out ‘clappers’ (pieces of card which when banged together make a noise) before the game ! If 21st century supporters of teams competing for top honours such as Arsenal and Chelsea can’t make a proper rumpus without the (presumably unwanted) intervention of their clubs, then you can hardly expect little old Reading to be a cauldron of noise. And at the end of the game, at least most Reading fans will return home to Berkshire.....along with a whopping percentage of Gooners. Now they are what you can call 'plastic' (if you must).

I agree Floyd...Everton away was like a morgue. The home fans were deathly quiet for virtually the entire game. It is easy to over-estimate how passionate other teams fans are. I dont think we are so plastic. Mind you I remember watching Reading play Blackpool in div 4 in around 1983/84 when we won 4-2 in front of around 4000 fans which was about par in those days so its fair to say there has been some bandwagon jumpers at the club since those days.

[Rev Algenon Stickleback H]

Tom Hark doesn't help our cause here. We're as plastic as they come with gimmicks like this. Sorry but its true.

the same sort of gimmick you'll see these days at nearly every single ground in the country, and seemingly at many abroad too.

I never understand what it is about some of our fans who seem to don sackcloth and ashes and chant we're not worthy at any comparison between us and other clubs.

Listening to some you'd be convinced the Madejski stadium is full of fans with rumblestix every week, for instance, as they talk about the shame of such fans, yet we had them once, for one game only, then dumped them.

[Rev Algenon Stickleback H]

any club with a neutral section, and who have to advertise cheap tickets on the radio on a weekly basis in order to fill their ground, isnt fit to polish madejskis wig

Madejski's wig

G.G

HTH

Madejski is a multi-millionaire. If he bought a wig, you'd think he'd buy one that you couldn't see his balding scalp through.

[Cripple Creek]

Indeed the word plastic is overused so much as to be meaningless and I don't have a problem with people who call themselves Reading fans live in London and go to two matches at the Mad Stad a season - which is fortunate as I was once such a fan - having said that I did my duty travelling to Hartlepool away games during midweek as a teenager which means I'm not plastic but everyone else is.

The number of people who live in Cornwall and go to watch Accrington Stanley every weekend is, these days, fairly negligible.

[Elm Park Old Boy]

RFC is no better or worse than anywhere else; seriously, some of you should attend some away matches at some time because you will never fail to be unimpressed by the lack of ‘atmosphere’.....

still trying to work my way through those clashing negatives...so you mean you will always be impressed?