Post by mehewmagic on Mar 24, 2015 12:13:46 GMT
Mar 24, 2015 9:12:30 GMT @gandyurney said:
Easter 1994. Reading went on to win the league, we missed out on the play offs after a late season collapse having spent most of the season in about third place
My Reading memories, extracted from the 'Away The Gas' book
"My first ever away game was at Reading F.C.’s Elm Park, on 28th November 1989. It was a drab F.A. Cup First Round replay which was slightly enlivened by a David Mehew goal in extra time, after it had been 0-0 at 90 minutes. To this day Mehew is one of my favourite ever Gas players. His goal didn’t settle the tie though and at 1-1 it had to go back to Twerton for a third game.
My second ever away game was also at Elm Park, later that season, and I saw my inaugural Gas away win courtesy of that free scoring blonde bombshell.
I don’t remember much about these two games, although the record books show that this March game was just before the famous run of six consecutive 2-1 victories (see pages 83-84 for some memories of that phenomenon…)
My only real memories are of how pitiable their ground was, although to be fair most grounds were really shoddy around this time. The Hillsborough disaster had only just taken place and the improvements it helped bring about hadn’t yet got through the pipeline. There were also very few rich owners around, and certainly no foreign money, or huge TV revenues flooding into the game.
Elm Park was even worse than most grounds as most stadia at least had some seats on both sides. At Reading only the Norfolk Road (Main Stand) had seats. The rest had huge terraces, rotting away with age. The home fans on the opposite side, the Tilehurst Terrace (a.k.a.South Bank), had the luxury of a roof and a great view, but us away fans in the Reading end (a.k.a. Town End) had nothing but crumbling concrete, huge fences, and a nasty trough to wee in.
This decrepit away end made no difference at these relatively low key matches, but it came home to roost at the high energy fixture a few years later, in April 1994, which I think safely goes down in my memory as the worst atmosphere I’ve been in at an away game.
I had left Uni by then and purloined my mum’s old dogmobile to drive to this Easter Saturday match, after picking up three mates from Banjo Island. We got there nice and early and stopped at Prospect Park, to the west of the ground, for a little game of footy and some grub. It was an idyllic setting, with the sun beating down, a light wind filtering through the swaying trees, and acres of lush green space.
After picking one of my brothers up from the train station we drove back towards the ground, still nice and chilled. You could have easily forgotten that this was a crunch game, as we were sixth and (realistically) were fighting for a play-off place, while Reading were top and looking to keep a gaggle of teams below them, several of whom had games in hand. We had the second best away record in the League, but the Royals had the second best home record in the League.
Something had to give.
The agreeable atmosphere didn’t last though as there were pockets of trouble in the streets behind the away end, and as we got towards the away entrance we found a vast swathe of Gasheads trying to get in, whilst the disorganised Thames Valley Police were being typically heavy handed. They always were.
I know Rovers fans aren’t always angels but in my experience the worse you treat them the more chance there is that they will repay your malice. My bro had had a few drinks on the train and the cops were trying to indicate he shouldn’t be allowed in. He wasn’t at all drunk or annoying though, and the rozzers really were just trying to start a fight in an empty room. I had just got through the turnstile when I turned to see them still talking to him. I remember reaching back over and physically dragging him through before they could do anything. Once inside there was no more discussion that could be had, and we made our way up to the rotten terrace above.
It was on days like these that you wonder how more incidents and accidents didn’t happen in these decomposing old grounds. Although I miss the character of the older grounds I don’t miss their barefaced health and safety failures. Sterile new identikit grounds can be boring, but they are still better than what we used to have. It almost goes without saying that no-one should ever go to a football match and never make it home. #justiceforthe92 I remember sitting in my little room trying to revise for my first year Uni exams when the news about Hillsborough unravelled over my radio. It was hard to comprehend, especially via a radio, and it didn’t fully hit me until I saw the TV pictures and the still photos later. Nothing in football, nay almost nothing in life, was ever quite the same again after that day. It sticks in my mind like a forever weeping sore.
We were towards the end of the now traditional fixture pile-up before and around Easter, with nine games in four weeks, and the bumper 8,000 crowd was a third bigger than the size of my previous visits to Elm Park. The atmosphere throughout was tense, almost ugly, not helped by Reading being the better team on the pitch. Home fans baited us caged up away fans from the safety of their large South Bank.
The flash point finally came when someone on that terrace was giving it all large style with his arms outstretched and doing the old ‘come on then’ motion, before slowly unzipping his jacket to reveal a bright red City top underneath. This ‘incident’ might sound pathetic when written down 20 years later on something as inorganic as paper, but at the time, with living breathing human beings in that pressure cooker environment it became a ’light the blue touch paper and stand well back‘ moment! Gasheads flipped and ran over the terrace to the corner, climbing the enormous fence and almost getting over it. This may merely sound like caged men bravado, but of all the times I’ve seen trouble inside a stadium that day is the one that sticks in the memory most. It really felt like people were serious about getting over that fence, and/or battling someone. Chaos ensued for a while, a lot of arrests were made, and later rumours went around that a Gashead had broke his arm in the midst of it all.
I remember nothing of the game and even had to look into the history books to find out that we lost it, 2-0. It was the first of four defeats in five games that pretty much scuppered our play-off chances. We finished eighth, only three points behind Burnley who grabbed the last play-off slot and were promoted a few weeks later after defeating Stockport County at Wembley, a team who had finished 12 points above them in the League.
That could have been us going up! Yet another occasion that we snatched defeat from the jaws of victory."