Time to admit it: Were you a plastic?

[Millsy]

I am a plastic.... from *that* day at Wembley.

But ironically it's the heartbreak that made me Reading Till I Die.

Not the success. The first few RFC games I watched were years before as a kid and we won all of them quite convincingly. They didn't make me a Reading fan. It was the heartbreak.

For with heartbreak comes the emotional determination to support through thick and thin, the passion to see success at any cost.

I think we're going to be pleasantly surprised. This hearbreak will make many new plastics turn to cast iron and support us to the death.

Welcome aboard, fellow Redingensians.

[SteveRoyal]

Only got into football after we got promoted - thanks to WC06.
But I feel a strong bond with this club, and no matter what league we are in, Royal For Life.

[Oddesy2k]

12 Years and still going

[Blue and White Toucan]

Difficult to define a 'plastic' or not!!

If you mean season ticket holder since half price season tickets in 2006 then I am a plastic.

However if you mean supporting RFC since I was 5 in 1972, going to most home games between 1974-75 and 1988, a few games (5/6) a season from 1989 to 2000, all home games at the Mad Stad until 2003, and then 4/5 for the next 2 seasons, then I am not!!!!!!!

A easy way to tell if you are a plastic is how you feel insided at times like this.

I was watching the news last night and saw the crowd at the Mad Stad, and it gave me the same tingly feeling I had when I was watching the open top bus celebration after winning the CCC. Different reasons but the same feeling you just can't help. You feel proud to be a Royal!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[willz_royal]

hmm. My first match was against ipswich? in 1995/6 i think. but i only started going properly every week whenw e moved to the mad stad, so i suppose im a Retro Plastician (cool made up word). Before then, and a little after, i was kinda too young and swayed by other opinions to support a crap local team, so i was a man u "fan", by having my bedroom painted in green stripes like a footy field, with manure crests and stuff all around the edges, and watching MOTD in the mornings.

But im Reading til i die now (oh what a crap cliche to end on)


Willy

[AbovetheI]

Complete plastic. Jumped on the bandwagon before the Wembley play-offs.

[SpaceCruiser]

Well, my first game was the 4-3 win over Plymouth way back in 1985, and I only went to the game cos a friend asked me and I at the time didn't know there was a football team in Reading. After that, I discovered that they had a great 13 game winning start to the season. I became a Reading fan from then on.

23 years, 4 promotions and 3 relegations later, I'm still a Reading fan. Once a Reading fan, always a Reading fan.

I'll still attend a Reading game next season.

[Sarah Star]

I freely admit that the first game I ever went to was our FA Cup replay in January. I'd always wanted to go to a football match, but not on my own, and hubby suggested this might be an easy one to get tickets to. Before then I just watched it on tv occasionally and had a vague interest in how Reading and Liverpool (hubby's team) were doing.

That's all changed now. When I don't go to a match I feel miserable and on edge. When I listen to our games on the radio, I feel physically sick when I think a goal is about to be scored either for or against us. I also have no interest in how any other team is doing unless it affects our results. I watch our games repeatedly on the tv. I scan the news for any mention of the team and I try to talk about Reading FC with friends and family, though most of them have no interest in football whatsoever. I love being part of a community that can organise a demonstration of 200+ people in 24 hours and that feels so passionately about the same thing as me. I am completely hooked...and maybe also a little sad, but I want a season ticket next year regardless.

[brendywendy]

I freely admit that the first game I ever went to was our FA Cup replay in January. I'd always wanted to go to a football match, but not on my own, and hubby suggested this might be an easy one to get tickets to. Before then I just watched it on tv occasionally and had a vague interest in how Reading and Liverpool (hubby's team) were doing.

That's all changed now. When I don't go to a match I feel miserable and on edge. When I listen to our games on the radio, I feel physically sick when I think a goal is about to be scored either for or against us. I also have no interest in how any other team is doing unless it affects our results. I watch our games repeatedly on the tv. I scan the news for any mention of the team and I try to talk about Reading FC with friends and family, though most of them have no interest in football whatsoever. I love being part of a community that can organise a demonstration of 200+ people in 24 hours and that feels so passionately about the same thing as me. I am completely hooked...and maybe also a little sad, but I want a season ticket next year regardless.

yay

welcome to RFC!

[Franchise FC]

If you're plastic and you know it clap your hands

CLAP CLAP

Surely it's more of a click

[Franchise FC]

I am a plastic.... from *that* day at Wembley.

But ironically it's the heartbreak that made me Reading Till I Die.

Not the success. The first few RFC games I watched were years before as a kid and we won all of them quite convincingly. They didn't make me a Reading fan. It was the heartbreak.

For with heartbreak comes the emotional determination to support through thick and thin, the passion to see success at any cost.

I think we're going to be pleasantly surprised. This hearbreak will make many new plastics turn to cast iron and support us to the death.

Welcome aboard, fellow Redingensians.

I didn't know that all RFC supporters were educated at Reading School

The Plastic Pedant

[Ups and Downs]

I freely admit that the first game I ever went to was our FA Cup replay in January. I'd always wanted to go to a football match, but not on my own, and hubby suggested this might be an easy one to get tickets to. Before then I just watched it on tv occasionally and had a vague interest in how Reading and Liverpool (hubby's team) were doing.

That's all changed now. When I don't go to a match I feel miserable and on edge. When I listen to our games on the radio, I feel physically sick when I think a goal is about to be scored either for or against us. I also have no interest in how any other team is doing unless it affects our results. I watch our games repeatedly on the tv. I scan the news for any mention of the team and I try to talk about Reading FC with friends and family, though most of them have no interest in football whatsoever. I love being part of a community that can organise a demonstration of 200+ people in 24 hours and that feels so passionately about the same thing as me. I am completely hooked...and maybe also a little sad, but I want a season ticket next year regardless.

That's the spirit, Sarah. Welcome aboard and all that. If you're looking for a season ticket next year you can have mine. The chair is nice and plastic and there's a few like minded souls around that area i'm sure.

Anyway, well done for admitting it. It seems most people on this thread mistook it as an opportunity to pin their longstanding Reading supporter credentials to the mast, but, although touching, that's not entirely what i was looking for.

Does anybody want to out a plastic? My younger brother has been coming along with me and my Dad since the Elm Park days and I thought he'd be overjoyed to get into the Premiership after all those years of either watching us nearly make it or languishing in the lower leagues. Unfortunately, after our first season in the Top Tier he just lost all interest in going, as he said he really didn't enjoy the games and all the overpaid arsehole players that came with it. A strange and very annoying decision, especially when i found out the little twat had accompanied his friend to a Swindon match recently (oh the shame!).

Anyway, this all meant that i had to try and shift a season ticket every other week or the seat would go empty. I couldn't even give it away a few times, but for the most part of the season that seat was filled by a steady stream of plastics. Some just came for the day out, but the more annoying ones came in newly purchased replica shirts and proceeded to annoy the f*ck out of me with their superior knowledge of all things Reading. Will they be back next year? Will they f*ck!

[Cripple Creek]

Been a Reading fan for 35 years and if I did not live in Oz would go and watch them just as enthusiastically in the Championship as I would have anywhere else (I left the UK about two weeks before the Premiership started and have never seen a prem match in my life). I just love the team and that's my thing but I have no problem with fans who choose not to stick around - it's a personal thing, live and let live and all that.
In fact, I find people who have a hang up about so-called "plastics" far more irritating in their pomposity than people who started supporting the club once they fancied the idea of watching Chelsea, Man U, Arsenal etc.
People who slag off "plastics" sound like the proverbial Monty Python Four Yorkshiremen IMHO.

[Magicman]

I think I must be quite plastic as I have only been going for about 6 seasons although the last 3 have all been as a STH. I actually have 2 season tickets now and intend to renew both and continue to take along my plastic friends at there own cost.

The strange thing is we often the only ones left in out row at the end of the game and we sit in the North stand which I thought might be a bit more hard core with 10-20 year fans with season tickets

When will i stop being plastic? I dont want to be plastic forever

[willz_royal]

But shirely people can support whenever they want...

[Ups and Downs]

OK, just to clarify; a plastic in this case is someone who only joined up during the latter half of our promotion winning season. A typical plastic is the sort of person who shuffles nervously in their seat and thinks to themselves "At home listening to the radio." when oppostition fans sing "Where were you when you were shit?"

Ordinarily you would also be a plastic if you were over the age of 14 (the age at which it is still just about acceptable to support an unrelated Premiership club) and didn't support the club when they were in the lower leagues, only coming along occasionally when they made it into the Championship, but the rules have been relaxed here.

[Brooklyn Royal]

Am I a plastic? Yes and No. I had never been to Elm Park, but have been supporting Reading since 2000. I have been a STH the last 6 years and will renew next year.

[mass sarr fan]

17 years + many more to come

Reading till i die

[Ups and Downs]

I think I must be quite plastic as I have only been going for about 6 seasons although the last 3 have all been as a STH. I actually have 2 season tickets now and intend to renew both and continue to take along my plastic friends at there own cost.

The strange thing is we often the only ones left in out row at the end of the game and we sit in the North stand which I thought might be a bit more hard core with 10-20 year fans with season tickets

When will i stop being plastic? I dont want to be plastic forever

Hmmm, North Stand, 6 seasons of regular attendence, 3 year season ticket holder- you're definitely a borderline plastic, but without knowing your age i'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt and say: NOT PLASTIC.

Well done you! Now, just have some kids and multiply the Reading love.

Anyone else whose under any doubts of their plasticity want to be judged?

[brendywendy]

why would anyone have got a season ticket before the 1/2 season tickets?apart from the small discount you get
the ground was half empty, you could turn up on the day and get a ticket