by tmesis »
24 Nov 2015 20:58
Grew up supporting Spurs, but kept an eye on Reading's results, which is about all you could do in early 80s Bracknell (in terms of following Reading FC, not in general, although...) as they got zero coverage in the national press*, and TVS would rather cut out their own tongues than put a Reading game on.
I didn't even know where the ground was. I knew it was somewhere to the west of the town centre, but that was it. I'd never seen a map of Reading that covered more than the town centre, and the only bigger maps were ordnance survey maps, which didn't have a football ground symbol.
That was until my brother called called up to do jury service at the courts down Tilehurst Road in early 1986, and the map they sent showed the football ground.
I think I went along to the very next game, just out of curiosity (a 2-0 win v Newport), and found I really enjoyed it. I went to the next game too, a win v Bury, and the next. It was at the third I realised I was a fan, bought a scarf to confirm my status, and promptly saw my first home defeat.
The following year I left school, and as luck would have it, Reading and Spurs were at home on alternate weekends virtually all season, so I watched both. I did similar the following year, but I found the lure of Spurs waning as the glamour wore off, and Reading games just started meaning more to me.
I think I knew it was over when I saw a Spurs game v Middlesbrough, who had Trevor Senior up front for them. Spurs won 3-2, scoring two late penalties, and rather than being pleased, I just felt a bit sorry for Trevor.
* younger fans just won't appreciate how little coverage there was of football outside the top two divisions back then. Divs 3 & 4 got covered, even in the tabloids, with a "round up", similar in size to how the conference gets covered now. Local news didn't show any goals from games on Mondays. There was no football league show showing all the goals (there weren't even cameras at most games in the old first division,which seems really odd now). BBC would show highlights on MotD from a lower division game maybe every month or two. TVS would show local games, but it would almost always be Southampton, Portsmouth or Brighton.