I hate this game - back from Wembley

[Ian Herring]

Seahawk and SWLR - kind words, cheers.

Yep. Recall the half-time feeling myself. I was knocking back a beer and some lemonade-based bottle of ghey shite and listening to the Swansea fans singing 'The Jacks are going up!' through the netting. I walked away saying to no-one in particular 'It's not over yet.' Glad to see a new fan 'snared' as one day, all us old bastards will be no more. Someone's got to feed the obsession. It's a good metaphor for life, being a Reading fan.

Seahawk: How else can you follow when you are far away? It's not cheating mate, it's a touching loyalty. I have that very same feeling about the future, for a reason I can't fathom out. It's just there.

[manny96]

IH - just re-read that post in full - superbly summed up that moment and the day in general (and exactly how football can be so wonderful). I don't think I'll ever forget that feeling as the ball left Jem's foot and the blue and white hooped half of Wembley prepared to erupt - something you captured so well. Thanks.

[M-U-R-T-Y]

Never mind eh lads.

[seahawk10]

Never mind eh lads.

Actually, I think we should mind and take another look. What a wonderful way to heal the heartbreak of a season ago! Football sure is a funny old game. If you had asked me if you could change last year's playoff final to a win I would not do it. This year would have never happened without last year's defeat. These last few months have been my most enjoyable time following Reading. Even more enjoyable than the previous promotion campaign or finishing 8th in the prem. I am sure there is a term for this, the availability heursitic or summink since this promotion just happened but 46 out of a possible 51 points!!! Are you freaking kidding me?

Anyway here is Ian Herring's post again to help us remember:

Interspas-less for a day or two so I thought I’d write this and post if I ever get back to the alternative world of disreason known as HNA. For those of you with the ‘I’m not reading all that’ virus alive in your circumlocutory-averse brains, feel free to move along. After a few days of reflection I thought I’d like to share a modicum of my thoughts in the wake of Swansea versus Reading.

What stands in my mind most of all is the period just after half-time when those wearing the colours of my adopted club, both on and off the pitch, took me by the throat and surprised me yet again. Football’s capacity to exemplify exaggerated extremes of tension, pride or emotion (or in this case, all three) in ways that never fail to make the hair stand up on the back of your neck, showed itself in a way that shamed the sport’s lesser lights (see any example of ‘modern’ football passim, the list’s present league leaders being the trough-lickers and carpet-baggers of FIFA) and reminded me once again what it is the best of this sometimes rancid sport can offer whenever it is you think you’ve finally fallen way out of love with its excesses or its absurdities.

It was encapsulated in the vortex of noise that rose from the Reading end of the stadium as Jem Karacan’s goal-bound shot was deflected onto the woodwork by an outstretched Swansea foot and the follow-up that so nearly came off but was finally scrambled away in the manouvre known as ‘The Welsh Relief’. I’ve been at nearly all of this club’s pivotal money-shot moments over the past thirty years but not at any of them (and many of them have been sublime as any fan will know when things go well) that have made me experience a genuine sense of awe. If I could have captured that moment and stored it and sold it, it would make a bob or two on eBay I am pretty sure.

I never ever thought I’d hear such a visceral animal howl from a Reading crowd as I did at that precise moment. It was the moment of ‘the kill’, the bloodlust moment of the thrusting in of steel, much as you’d get at a bullfight in a corrida, the Swansea fans at the other end must have been sat frozen in momentary despair as the ball headed towards the goal in what must have seemed like slow motion as their seemingly unassailable lead had been collectively dismantled in the ten minutes or so just after half-time when our airborne crosses had scissored them just as their more lawn-level-based equivalents had done before half-time.

Known for our passivity and quietness in comparison to some sets of fans (Monday’s opponents included, they were loud and passionate when roused and no mistake, but no more than the media myths sometimes like to portray when they’re searching for some punchy copy), on this occasion something seemed to grip our fans collectively that I had not witnessed before en masse. Yes, many were ‘day-trippers’, or of the more modern type of fan often derided here (and I have spent my fair share of time deriding ‘modern’ football in full recidivist mode but there comes a time when you have to accept that the ‘old days’ are no more and even then, that you only have your own spin and take on them and that you should perhaps look around and see that others watch their football in a different light without being less of a fan than you or less ‘passionate’), but in that period after half-time each one of them rose and ‘joined the cause’ even without thinking as the intense whirlwind of Reading’s short revival rose and tore through the back-tracking panic of the Swans’ defence.

Goal one brought a semi-ironic cheer of some retained sense of residual hope. Goal two released a roar of returned belief and blood lust for the fight that made me (an old hand at this football supporting lark) shiver, and Karacan’s surge and drilled delivery, if it had gone in, would have released a bedlam of noise and insane celebration that would have knocked the Archie Lovell moment (two against Wolves in six minutes of injury time back at the beautiful old Elm Park) and the last gasp comeback in the play-offs at the Mad Stad against Wigan in ’01 (East Stand bloody shaking!) into a cocked hat. On those two occasions the air had split with a wall of sound I thought would never be bettered, yet, as the unfashionable and easy to knock Reading FC often manages to do just when it is least expected, it confounds your expectations and provides another wonderful memory you’ll never want to erase.

At that moment, no matter that Swansea probably had the ‘legs’ on us in terms of pace and youth, and no matter that they had found themselves a little further in front than a calmer assessment of the play might have concluded (we weren’t quite three goals worse than them over all after forty-five minutes and they weren’t entirely three goals ‘better’), I felt that if we had equalised then that the bullfight analogy would have been correct, and that to use unsubtle language, we would have gone on and ‘butchered’ them.

No, we weren’t technically better, and in terms of recent performances it wasn’t the best Reading display we’d seen for a while but sometimes sport transcends the technical and becomes gladiatorial and this was how it seemed just at that moment. On the pitch and in the vertiginous wrap and cowl of the new Wembley you could almost run your hands up and down the cold steel feel of the phrase ‘running in the sword’, and if the woodwork and an outstretched boot hadn’t have intervened then it’s hard to disagree with McDermott’s assessment of the same. I think Swansea would have ‘gone’, like a concussed boxer who’d taken a haymaker on the jaw, and we would have gone on to win, administering the coup-de-grace as our opponents fell apart.

But it wasn’t to be. And in the same light it doesn’t do to be churlish about certain matters. I have a personal dislike of some aspects of the Welsh that I can’t easily over-ride. I recall Swansea’s less party-like visits to Elm Park and visits to the Vetch that were, a-hem, ‘unwelcoming’, yet it would be foolish not to say ‘well done’. Fans have short memories. As Reading fans over the years we have been treated well by others when things have been on the up for us. Blackpool fans applauding us off the pitch when we’d put four past them on their own turf, Leicester fans congratulating us on promotion to the same league Swansea are looking forward to going into now (and I’m relieved we’re not, as I despise the Premier League), not so long ago. On the day Swansea deserved it and certainly did enough to shade it (Phil Dowd notwithstanding). As for those who have criticised Griffin and Kizanishvili for their performances on the day, I’d be interested to know if any of those posters where the same ones lauding them over the past few months for their experience and consistently solid performances in the bread and butter areas of the league where they contributed very strongly to our run that took us on to Wembley. Sometimes when you’re up against players younger than you they are going to be quicker, end of, and sometimes it happens on a big stage. As the tree-huggers say, ‘move on’.

As for Swansea? Good luck to them. Similar to us they have a ‘story’, leaner times and now a chance to have it out for a while with the millionaires. Much as I acknowledge my ‘comedy hatred’ of the Taffs, they were little different to us on the day as fans. It’s been a long time since I’ve been at a game where I have seen so many people genuinely excited, in high spirits and smiling before a game. I’m the last ‘happy-clappy’ exponent of the modern game you’ll ever meet, but even in losing on Monday, there was a very much a lot ‘right’ about the day. As with all racial stereotyping it’s easy to dislike a genus, easier to like the people when you meet them in person. Walking away from Wembley we met a few Swansea fans who were unfailingly polite and respectful and did not crow or give it large and were a pleasure to speak to. It would be mean-spirited not to wish them well.

But the abiding memory for me of the day is of yet another unsurpassable day spent supporting my football club. Over the years they have infuriated me, delighted me, frustrated me and brought me moments of insane inexplicable joy. The thought that ran through my mind was one I could not put my finger on until a few days later. Watching us play, seeing a whole half of Wembley stadium bedecked in hoops and blue and white, hearing that animal howl as the ‘equaliser’ pinged off the post, remaining to applaud the players and Brian McDermott off the pitch and seeing the (evident) disappointment on their faces, slowly filtered in.

The thought was the feeling of pride. Not the chest-out nonsense often associated with sport, but of knowing that the club I had started following all those years ago in its shabby, humble clothes had turned up here many years later, ‘suited-up’ at Wembley Stadium, once again, something unthinkable back then. But slightly different this time. In the Simod, and later against Bolton back in ’95 then we were all, to some extent, ‘day trippers’ back then, wide-eyed and amazed to be at Wembley, and certainly we were underdogs.

But something has happened to us since then. Something perhaps that someone might whisper in Madejski’s ear as a form of gratitude one day, when he has stepped down and our club is in more rapacious or less-caring hands, because it has been during his tenure that our club seems to have finally ‘come of age’. And that was what I could finally put my finger on after the disappointment had faded and some time to gather thoughts had kicked in.

At Wembley Stadium on the 30th May 2011, as, even though we had lost a game of football and yes, it bloody hurt, neither our players nor our supporters looked out of place in such grand surroundings for a single moment of the afternoon.

I for one am pretty proud of that. Long live ‘little old’ RFC.

(Apologies for the length of post.)

(Apologies for the length of post.)

Don't apologise. That was probably the best piece of writing on the subject of RFC that I have ever read. Thank you.

Excellent post Ian. Supporting this club, even from great distance, has been a very rewarding experience for me personally.
I feel I am cheating a bit not having suffered through some of the struggles. I have a very positive feeling for the future.

An exceptional read. Capturing the descriptive moment well. I shall read again later. Both humble and inspirational.

Superb piece of writing the encapsulates the day and my feelings for the club perfectly.

Great piece of writing. But just how many more " wasn't to be" moments do we have to endure before football finally gives us something we deserve? We are always the heroic nearly men and thats what is most hurtful.

[pea]

Anyone who still criticises our club and our support can get stuffed after this season, look at the fans against West Ham and Southampton and the scenes in the aftermath of Tuesday's game. Yes we have a bigger support than before, but that's only due to the sustained era of success that our management have brought in during this last decade. We've done that the right way, building from the bottom up, appointing managers from within, bringing extremely high quality players through the academy and into the first team such as Sig, Pearce, Karacan and McCarthy, and only buying players we could afford.

So proud to be a Royal

[Royal With Cheese]

Just read Ian Herring's post this morning, bought a tear to the eye. Should be framed and put up somewhere in the mad stad for all to read.

[loyalroyal4life]

distant memory now that has been erased and put to bed after this seasons heroics, admittedly the only thing on that day that made the pain less bearable was constant flow of alcohol

[chilipepper91]

There's always next year...

[Super Kevin Bremner!]

Hey, when I look back to that I think about how incredibly lucky we are to have already seen our club side play at the new Wembley in one of the biggest (arguably THE biggest) club fixtures in the World. How many supporters of football teams up and down the Country will be able to experience that?

Imagine if Swindon had won that Mickey Mouse cup final, would they trade that for missing out on the PL by a gnats knacker, like we did? I'd suggest they would.

[Uke]

Seeing RFC at "Old Wembley" >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Seeing RFC at "New Wembley"

#WHWUTLTSC

[Badger Finger]

My god, that is amazing stuff from Herring right there. Truly tear inducing brilliance...

I've literally only seen the Karacan shot played back. I still have the whole and on my Sky+ box, but until now, haven't been able to bring myself to watch it... Demons banished from this young one finally...

[melonhead]

also been unable to watch that game since. dont need to now
had to keep looking away when sky sports showed fed picking ball out of net on their pre programme vid

[The Prisoner]

Some great posts looking back (not least Ian Herring's which brings a tear to the eye!)

I really only remember three things from Wembley - 1) (as I posted earlier in the thread) the feeling of being stunned at half time, and not wanting it to be 5 or 6 2) Offering most of the Swansea section out when we got back to 3-2 (I was sitting about 4 seats into the Reading allocation, the Swans fans were about 15 seats away with the netting) 3) Feds thumping the floor in frustration after letting in the fourth goal from the penalty spot.

Being honest I'd have liked to have put the play-off jinx to bed, but with the canny strengthening (Roberts > Long? Gorkss definitely > Mills) this season has been unbelievable.

[M-U-R-T-Y]

Fine Rain is on form in his first post on this thread.

[muddyfeet]

also been unable to watch that game since. dont need to now
had to keep looking away when sky sports showed fed picking ball out of net on their pre programme vid

watched it about a month back was a bit gutting

[Ian Royal]

Never mind eh lads.

Actually, I think we should mind and take another look. What a wonderful way to heal the heartbreak of a season ago! Football sure is a funny old game. If you had asked me if you could change last year's playoff final to a win I would not do it. This year would have never happened without last year's defeat. These last few months have been my most enjoyable time following Reading. Even more enjoyable than the previous promotion campaign or finishing 8th in the prem. I am sure there is a term for this, the availability heursitic or summink since this promotion just happened but 46 out of a possible 51 points!!! Are you freaking kidding me?

Anyway here is Ian Herring's post again to help us remember:

Interspas-less for a day or two so I thought I’d write this and post if I ever get back to the alternative world of disreason known as HNA. For those of you with the ‘I’m not reading all that’ virus alive in your circumlocutory-averse brains, feel free to move along. After a few days of reflection I thought I’d like to share a modicum of my thoughts in the wake of Swansea versus Reading.

What stands in my mind most of all is the period just after half-time when those wearing the colours of my adopted club, both on and off the pitch, took me by the throat and surprised me yet again. Football’s capacity to exemplify exaggerated extremes of tension, pride or emotion (or in this case, all three) in ways that never fail to make the hair stand up on the back of your neck, showed itself in a way that shamed the sport’s lesser lights (see any example of ‘modern’ football passim, the list’s present league leaders being the trough-lickers and carpet-baggers of FIFA) and reminded me once again what it is the best of this sometimes rancid sport can offer whenever it is you think you’ve finally fallen way out of love with its excesses or its absurdities.

It was encapsulated in the vortex of noise that rose from the Reading end of the stadium as Jem Karacan’s goal-bound shot was deflected onto the woodwork by an outstretched Swansea foot and the follow-up that so nearly came off but was finally scrambled away in the manouvre known as ‘The Welsh Relief’. I’ve been at nearly all of this club’s pivotal money-shot moments over the past thirty years but not at any of them (and many of them have been sublime as any fan will know when things go well) that have made me experience a genuine sense of awe. If I could have captured that moment and stored it and sold it, it would make a bob or two on eBay I am pretty sure.

I never ever thought I’d hear such a visceral animal howl from a Reading crowd as I did at that precise moment. It was the moment of ‘the kill’, the bloodlust moment of the thrusting in of steel, much as you’d get at a bullfight in a corrida, the Swansea fans at the other end must have been sat frozen in momentary despair as the ball headed towards the goal in what must have seemed like slow motion as their seemingly unassailable lead had been collectively dismantled in the ten minutes or so just after half-time when our airborne crosses had scissored them just as their more lawn-level-based equivalents had done before half-time.

Known for our passivity and quietness in comparison to some sets of fans (Monday’s opponents included, they were loud and passionate when roused and no mistake, but no more than the media myths sometimes like to portray when they’re searching for some punchy copy), on this occasion something seemed to grip our fans collectively that I had not witnessed before en masse. Yes, many were ‘day-trippers’, or of the more modern type of fan often derided here (and I have spent my fair share of time deriding ‘modern’ football in full recidivist mode but there comes a time when you have to accept that the ‘old days’ are no more and even then, that you only have your own spin and take on them and that you should perhaps look around and see that others watch their football in a different light without being less of a fan than you or less ‘passionate’), but in that period after half-time each one of them rose and ‘joined the cause’ even without thinking as the intense whirlwind of Reading’s short revival rose and tore through the back-tracking panic of the Swans’ defence.

Goal one brought a semi-ironic cheer of some retained sense of residual hope. Goal two released a roar of returned belief and blood lust for the fight that made me (an old hand at this football supporting lark) shiver, and Karacan’s surge and drilled delivery, if it had gone in, would have released a bedlam of noise and insane celebration that would have knocked the Archie Lovell moment (two against Wolves in six minutes of injury time back at the beautiful old Elm Park) and the last gasp comeback in the play-offs at the Mad Stad against Wigan in ’01 (East Stand bloody shaking!) into a cocked hat. On those two occasions the air had split with a wall of sound I thought would never be bettered, yet, as the unfashionable and easy to knock Reading FC often manages to do just when it is least expected, it confounds your expectations and provides another wonderful memory you’ll never want to erase.

At that moment, no matter that Swansea probably had the ‘legs’ on us in terms of pace and youth, and no matter that they had found themselves a little further in front than a calmer assessment of the play might have concluded (we weren’t quite three goals worse than them over all after forty-five minutes and they weren’t entirely three goals ‘better’), I felt that if we had equalised then that the bullfight analogy would have been correct, and that to use unsubtle language, we would have gone on and ‘butchered’ them.

No, we weren’t technically better, and in terms of recent performances it wasn’t the best Reading display we’d seen for a while but sometimes sport transcends the technical and becomes gladiatorial and this was how it seemed just at that moment. On the pitch and in the vertiginous wrap and cowl of the new Wembley you could almost run your hands up and down the cold steel feel of the phrase ‘running in the sword’, and if the woodwork and an outstretched boot hadn’t have intervened then it’s hard to disagree with McDermott’s assessment of the same. I think Swansea would have ‘gone’, like a concussed boxer who’d taken a haymaker on the jaw, and we would have gone on to win, administering the coup-de-grace as our opponents fell apart.

But it wasn’t to be. And in the same light it doesn’t do to be churlish about certain matters. I have a personal dislike of some aspects of the Welsh that I can’t easily over-ride. I recall Swansea’s less party-like visits to Elm Park and visits to the Vetch that were, a-hem, ‘unwelcoming’, yet it would be foolish not to say ‘well done’. Fans have short memories. As Reading fans over the years we have been treated well by others when things have been on the up for us. Blackpool fans applauding us off the pitch when we’d put four past them on their own turf, Leicester fans congratulating us on promotion to the same league Swansea are looking forward to going into now (and I’m relieved we’re not, as I despise the Premier League), not so long ago. On the day Swansea deserved it and certainly did enough to shade it (Phil Dowd notwithstanding). As for those who have criticised Griffin and Kizanishvili for their performances on the day, I’d be interested to know if any of those posters where the same ones lauding them over the past few months for their experience and consistently solid performances in the bread and butter areas of the league where they contributed very strongly to our run that took us on to Wembley. Sometimes when you’re up against players younger than you they are going to be quicker, end of, and sometimes it happens on a big stage. As the tree-huggers say, ‘move on’.

As for Swansea? Good luck to them. Similar to us they have a ‘story’, leaner times and now a chance to have it out for a while with the millionaires. Much as I acknowledge my ‘comedy hatred’ of the Taffs, they were little different to us on the day as fans. It’s been a long time since I’ve been at a game where I have seen so many people genuinely excited, in high spirits and smiling before a game. I’m the last ‘happy-clappy’ exponent of the modern game you’ll ever meet, but even in losing on Monday, there was a very much a lot ‘right’ about the day. As with all racial stereotyping it’s easy to dislike a genus, easier to like the people when you meet them in person. Walking away from Wembley we met a few Swansea fans who were unfailingly polite and respectful and did not crow or give it large and were a pleasure to speak to. It would be mean-spirited not to wish them well.

But the abiding memory for me of the day is of yet another unsurpassable day spent supporting my football club. Over the years they have infuriated me, delighted me, frustrated me and brought me moments of insane inexplicable joy. The thought that ran through my mind was one I could not put my finger on until a few days later. Watching us play, seeing a whole half of Wembley stadium bedecked in hoops and blue and white, hearing that animal howl as the ‘equaliser’ pinged off the post, remaining to applaud the players and Brian McDermott off the pitch and seeing the (evident) disappointment on their faces, slowly filtered in.

The thought was the feeling of pride. Not the chest-out nonsense often associated with sport, but of knowing that the club I had started following all those years ago in its shabby, humble clothes had turned up here many years later, ‘suited-up’ at Wembley Stadium, once again, something unthinkable back then. But slightly different this time. In the Simod, and later against Bolton back in ’95 then we were all, to some extent, ‘day trippers’ back then, wide-eyed and amazed to be at Wembley, and certainly we were underdogs.

But something has happened to us since then. Something perhaps that someone might whisper in Madejski’s ear as a form of gratitude one day, when he has stepped down and our club is in more rapacious or less-caring hands, because it has been during his tenure that our club seems to have finally ‘come of age’. And that was what I could finally put my finger on after the disappointment had faded and some time to gather thoughts had kicked in.

At Wembley Stadium on the 30th May 2011, as, even though we had lost a game of football and yes, it bloody hurt, neither our players nor our supporters looked out of place in such grand surroundings for a single moment of the afternoon.

I for one am pretty proud of that. Long live ‘little old’ RFC.

(Apologies for the length of post.)

(Apologies for the length of post.)

Don't apologise. That was probably the best piece of writing on the subject of RFC that I have ever read. Thank you.

Excellent post Ian. Supporting this club, even from great distance, has been a very rewarding experience for me personally.
I feel I am cheating a bit not having suffered through some of the struggles. I have a very positive feeling for the future.

An exceptional read. Capturing the descriptive moment well. I shall read again later. Both humble and inspirational.

Superb piece of writing the encapsulates the day and my feelings for the club perfectly.

Great piece of writing. But just how many more " wasn't to be" moments do we have to endure before football finally gives us something we deserve? We are always the heroic nearly men and thats what is most hurtful.

I genuinely think that should be sent to the squad and staff to read with a little "Thank you for going one better" note.

I can't get over how absolutely brilliant that post is and how evocative and well it sums up everything I feel about the club. The Players and Staff should get to know this.

[Badger Finger]

'greed...

If a club needs to know how much it means to fans, then this is it...

[Rusty royal]

It's a great feeling know that we have not got to go through that again. The tears of that day are long passed but if you had said to me that less than a year later we would be in the Prem, I would not have believed it.

[paultheroyal]

Anyone who still criticises our club and our support can get stuffed after this season, look at the fans against West Ham and Southampton and the scenes in the aftermath of Tuesday's game. Yes we have a bigger support than before, but that's only due to the sustained era of success that our management have brought in during this last decade. We've done that the right way, building from the bottom up, appointing managers from within, bringing extremely high quality players through the academy and into the first team such as Sig, Pearce, Karacan and McCarthy, and only buying players we could afford.

So proud to be a Royal

West Ham and Saints have to be right up there as 2 of the best games I have had pleasure to be at!

[Pool and Darts]

and then this happened:........

http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/football/17728728


almst makes me