Time to admit it: Were you a plastic?

[Ups and Downs]

OK OK, now that we're out of the Premiership, I think the time has come for those people who only became fully paid up Reading fans in the latter half of our promotion season or in the following two years spent in the dizzying heights of the top tier to admit it.

It's OK. There was nothing wrong with it and I'm sure we were all glad to have you filling up those previously empty seats so that the place didn't look half empty on Match Of The Day but, and here's the question, will you be sticking around next year to back the boys in the Championship?

So here's the place to admit it people; were you or was anyone you know a plastic and will you continue to support Reading FC in the Championship?

[Row Z Royal]

I am a plastic and will continue to be one for the considerable future.

[LoyalRoyalFan]

15 years of full support.
Royal for Life.

[North Somerset Royal]

Full support since1968 but still a plastic compared to some.

[seahawk10]

Yes and Yes. I started following Reading FC upon promotion to the Prem in 2006. As I posted in a different thread, I have been spoiled. I jumped on the bandwagon after all of you had worked your entire life to push that beast up a steep hill. Like Sisyphus, it seemed like everytime you got close to the top of the hill the rock would slip away and roll back down the hill. (Mixing metaphors again I know). Well, for two years we got over on the football gods and actually made it! Top flight football for little Reading! But sure enough, they have awoken from their slumber and the rock/bandwagon is back at the bottom of the hill. So here you go again trying to push it uphill. Now it's my turn to do some of the work. So make space for me, let's fix it and get this thing back up the hill. This is my first relegation, but I am in it for the long haul.

My favoite sign from Sunday held up by a young man:

Win, Lose or Draw
Reading Till I Die
URZ!!!

[sucatraps]

I'm 100% Polly Propylene a mere glory chaser that's seen all the glory of Elm Park, the Two Ronnies, Terry the taxi, FSB, Tommy Burns, Pardew, Coppell, relegation, promotion, pants day the Beard Band, drool, wibble..................

[Y21_Royal]

LOL

Thread of the Day, not the nonsense about making SSC stay!!!

Nearly 15 years I've going and a ST for 10

[handbags_harris]

19 years a Reading fan, and after 351 league matches and 505 league goals I'm sure as hell not going to stop now. Y25 row HH season ticket holder next season, and away season ticket holder...as ever.

[Average]

I'm so plastic I don't dare sit out in the sun in case I melt.

[Kitson12]

12 years a Royals fan...and I will be staying in my seat next year too.
Am looking forward to it, despite the disappointment.

[Ups and Downs]

I went to two matches in total during the premiership years. I intend to keep up my loyal support next year. I am no plastic

Hardly going at all in the Premiership is even worse than being a Plastic!!!

[PEARCEY]

Depends how you define Plastic.
I have supported the club for around 36 years now. First of all from a distance because I was a little lad living in Glos but during the 1980's I started to go and see the team play.
I only attend around 4 live games a season but wherever I am in the world I always know when and where we are playing, whose in the team and what the score is.
I am very passionate about the team and have tried to bribe my young sons with trips to the Megastore to entice them to support Reading. Sadly my older boy has a mind of his own and supports bloody Liverpool.
However I suppose because I dont go week in and week out I am more Plastic than some. Even so one poxy relegation wont stop me supporting the club. Its for life...for better or worse.Amen.

[Norfolk Royal]

35 years, followed us around the country in the old fourth division. I think that makes me an iron man.

[Ian Royal]

So no one coming forward then?

There is no shame in it.

I jumped on the wagon in '95 and my first live game was the play off final defeat. The first game I ever saw was the 0-0 against Tranmere in the second leg of the play off semi, and that was only the second half on TV.

I cut my football supporter teeth struggling to survive in Division 1 and trudged on through the dark days of Bullivant and Burns. I got rewarded with promotion back to what I'd considered our rightful place. Now I'm older and wise and more educated in the way of RFC. Now I know historically our rightful place is the lowest level I've seen us play at. But we've moved on from that these days.

Once you take a nibble at being a Reading fan, it's hard to give it up. So much promise of sweet sweet reward, and the fight in getting it makes it all the better.

[Doyler]

A royal since my first game at elm park on boxing day 1995

[Franchise FC]

I'm a complete Anti-Plastic

STH from late 70's to mid 90's, missed very few away games in that time (including a midweek trip to a friendly with Altrincham - I must remember to keep taking the medication for that one)

However, saw only 5 PL games, and two of those were at St James Park

I'm happy enough that there were enough plastics to fill the place every other week, though

[Elm Park Old Boy]

My first season was the last time (I think) we went down so narrowly (goal average in those days).

Didn't put me off then. Won't now.

This plastic tag is overdone anyway. Obviously we'll attract new fans when we're doing well. If a proportion of them stay, that's good.

Didn't we have around 9,000 STHs before promotion was in the wind (when it went up to 18.000?). I guess the key test will be how far above 9,000 we are next season. That, my friends, will be a true test of our progress in recent years, not how much money we might have spunked on some foreign striker in January....

[Rev Algenon Stickleback H]

I was indeed a bandwagon jumper...albeit at the end of the 1985/86 season. In my defence I would add that I'd had a curiosity about Reading and fancied going along to see what it was like, but I had no idea where the ground was.

I enjoyed the first game, a 2-0 win v Newport (no, not that one), followed by a 2-0 win v Bury a week or two later, and took the plunge and bought a scarf to commit myself as a Reading fan before the next match v Bournemouth, and we promptly lost 2-1.