First Reading game?

[BobKnows]

Reading v Swansea circa 1990 -I won the tickets in a competition at Micklands Primary school because I knew where all the days of the week get their name from - went with my Dad and, embarrassingly, spent most of the game supporting Swansea because I assumed Reading would be wearing red

[weybridgewanderer]

not really sure

i think it was a league cup game v luton in the late eighties / early nineties

[Schards#2]

5/12/70 - Reading 1-5 Bury

[floyd__streete]

Reading 1-0 Derby, 26/4/86. I was 6 years old, could hardly see a thing and fidgetted like a little sod sat on my dad's shoulders. My only real memory of the day is of exiting the South Bank at full time and pointing back at the pitch, swamped with Reading supporters celebrating promotion achieved the previous week. I wanted to join in but wasn't allowed . Subsequent research tells me that trevor Senior scored the first RFC goal that I witnessed and that Derby fielded the likes of Mickey Thomas (welsh fraudster rather than black Arsenal midfielder), Steve MacLaren and John Gregory.

[mini _dariusz]

Reading 1-0 Derby, 26/4/86. I was 6 years old, could hardly see a thing and fidgetted like a little sod sat on my dad's shoulders. My only real memory of the day is of exiting the South Bank at full time and pointing back at the pitch, swamped with Reading supporters celebrating promotion achieved the previous week. I wanted to join in but wasn't allowed . Subsequent research tells me that trevor Senior scored the first RFC goal that I witnessed and that Derby fielded the likes of Mickey Thomas (welsh fraudster rather than black Arsenal midfielder), Steve MacLaren and John Gregory.

racist.

[strap]

My first game was October or November 1981 - no idea what game it was, though when we had this thread a while back someone came up with what it probably was. All I know is, I fell in love with Gary Heale and he left soon after.

Got a habit of falling in love quickly don't you.

So Sarah, how old are you ?

Is this grooming or what?!?!

[mini _dariusz]

My first game was October or November 1981 - no idea what game it was, though when we had this thread a while back someone came up with what it probably was. All I know is, I fell in love with Gary Heale and he left soon after.

Got a habit of falling in love quickly don't you.

So Sarah, how old are you ?

Is this grooming or what?!?!

Call it what you like mate. I just wanna swerve it.

[strap]

5/12/70 - Reading 1-5 Bury

You poor sod! Mine was RFC 0-1 Luton 11/03/70. Pissing down with rain, magic EP atmosphere, and why oh why didnlt Fred Sharpe just take Malcolm MacDonald out from behind I'll never know. Red card today, nothing more than a free-kick (if you were lucky!) in those days!

[ScottishRoyal]

Unfortunately I have no idea! It was very early nineties for a mates birthday party so and I was pretty young, although Luton and Oldham both sound familiar. I didn't go for a couple of years afterwards, but then when I was old enough, my brother started taking me with his mates and we stood on the southbank. Some of my mates then started coming too and by 95/96 was going regularly with mates.

[mini _dariusz]

5/12/70 - Reading 1-5 Bury

You poor sod! Mine was RFC 0-1 Luton 11/03/70. Pissing down with rain, magic EP atmosphere, and why oh why didnlt Fred Sharpe just take Malcolm MacDonald out from behind I'll never know. Red card today, nothing more than a free-kick (if you were lucky!) in those days!

And there was me thinking Schards was the daddy.

[Riseley]

Season 68-69. Manager Roy Bentley. Sky blue kit. Socks called stockings and shorts called knickers in the programme...probably. Floodlights not on pylons but roof mounted. Division 3 fixture Reading 4 Stockport County 2. Watched from the Norfolk road seats and vowed to request papa took me to my future spiritual home for my next game..the much missed Southbank. Jester hats, clappy clappy chants and loud stadium announcers belonged stateside.

[Bill Oddie's Beard]

'93 at home to Man City in the cup, 0-4 I think it was. Then started to go regularly in 93/94 season and got first season ticket in 94/95.

[Rev Algenon Stickleback H]

Reading 2 Newport 0, 1986 (no, not the record breaking one)

Being raised in Bracknell I developed a curiosity about Reading, but didn't support them. Young 'uns will have to appreciate how difficult it was to "follow" Reading back then. They were never on tv, not even Southern TVs news, as the games weren't filmed. The papers didn't have any reports of lower division football at all. Do well and a club might get a 5 minute piece on football focus or "On the Ball", but that was about it. And I had no idea where Elm Park was. I had one map of Reading, but that only showed the town centre. It's not as if you could go on the internet and call up the multimap page or google earth back then.

By luck my older brother got called up for jury service at the courts down Tilehurst Road, and there on the map posted to him was Elm Park. The Newport match was the very next Saturday game. I went to the next Saturday game, and we won that won 2-0 as well. It wasn't until the next Saturday home game that I took the plunge, bought a scarf, and declared myself a supporter of Reading. We duly went and lost that match 1-2 to Bournemouth.


Oddly enough, people always moan about johnny-come-lately bandwagon jumpers not appreciating success, but I was definitely one that season, as Reading clinched promotion a just shade over a month after that first game I went to, yet I was just as into it then as I've ever been.

[readingbedding]

Don't know, don't care.

[gazzer, loyal royal]

2000 i think

beat blackpool 3-0 or 3-1 and forster got a hat trick

[winchester_royal]

Can't remember what year it was...sometime in the late 90's.

A 1-0 win against Stockport, with Scott Howie saving a last minute penalty IIRC.

[rfcjoe]

I was too young to remember, but it was a game at Elm Park.

An early memory of Reading for me was the open day down at Elm Park when it was closing?

And of course the 3-0 win over Luton down at the Madstad.

[yappy]

3rd May 1998- Reading 0-1 Norwich, i'm sure I don't have to remind people the significance of that game!

The reason I was actually at the game is that my Sunday League team got offered to play in a 6 a side tournament before the game (a tournament in which we won ). Still have a little medal thing with 'Farewall to Elm Park' engraved on it. From then on, being fairly local, I always kept an eye out for Reading, but being quite young at the time, I didn't really start consistently attending games until 2002/3, and since then I haven't looked back!

[Ian Royal]

May 1995 Reading 3 - 4 Bolton Wanderers, Play Off Final at Wembley.
Nogan, Williams, Quinn
Lovell - missed pen

The only thing I can really remember clearly from the game was Quinn's consolation at the end and being optimistic we could do it properly next season. How little I knew back then.

A friend who used to go regularly knew I was starting to get the bug without having been to a game, so offered to take me with his family. I must have been about 14, so a late starter, but no one in my family was really that interested in football.

[Hugo Boss]

West Brom (H) in 1987... I think. Ron Atkinson was Manager and the Old Man took me, just like my Grandad had done with him in the 50's. Sat in the old North Stand and was right next to the away dug out but can't remember much about it.

Went with him in "the seats" until my early teens when I started watching with pals from the infamous Southbank.