by Super Kevin Bremner! »
20 Apr 2012 08:11
Love this thread!
I think my first game would have been 1982/3. My old man was in the navy so we lived in Plymouth at the time, but whenever my dad had the time he'd drive up to see family and catch a game.
I was 5 then and remember that we used to pick my uncle up from Gallowstree Common, drive to and park in Prospect Park, watch a half of footie there (which I was too young to like) then walk over to Elm Park for about 2.15pm.
Was too small to see the game so we took an old bread crate and I sat/stood on that.
I used to infuriate my dad by sitting there bored and asking if there'd been a goal every time the crowd clapped. This was always in the South Bank, about 15 yards back, in line with the penalty area closest to the Tilehurst End.
As I got a little older and we moved to Reading in 1986, we started going weekly, and I have vivid memories of being one of the kids sat on the wall at the front of the South Bank. The most frustrating bit was that you weren't allowed to dangle your feet over the front of the wall so you had to sit at a weird angle contorting your back and neck up!
For a small while, we moved to the corner of the South Bank/Tilehurst End and the stewards would allow you to sit on the concrete block that the floodlight was perched on, but they soon nipped that in the bud!
We had a couple of seasons in the Tilehurst End where we used to stand on the little bridge at the back just in front of the refreshment window, over the alley way towards the pissers. Loved it up there.
It's funny because when people whine about us not showing ambition and all that, it's because they're often scared of going back to a half empty stadium with shit teams to play, but when I look back at being one of only 3,426 supporters in the ground when David Leworthy scored with a diving header to beat Mansfield 1-0, I have such fond memories.
I can honestly say that I enjoyed it back then as much as I do now.
In my adolescent teen years where I would get high as a kite on a Friday night and not sleep for sometimes a day or two on the trot, I still could not bear the though of not walking freezing cold up the Oxford Road, to stand their shivering my bollocks off and throwing away a 3-0 lead against Port Vale.
It's all this that makes the RTG argument a bit benign for me. I don't sit there thinking everything's rosy when it ain't, but when push comes to shove, all I really give a toss about is that for the foreseeable future, my Saturday afternoon routine of watching Reading will not disappear. My little boy is 4 and a half years old now and this coming season will be his first with a season ticket. It gives me a little lump in my throat that he is already loving watching Reading more than I did at his age, and even more so at the thought that one day he might be reflecting on his oldest memories of watching them as I have now.
We're an emotional bunch, us footie supporters, ain't we?
Thought about capitalising the 'R', but didn' want to be too obvious
)
