Here are some articles I found on the When Saturday Comes website:
When Scunthorpe took the lead against Reading on November 27 at the Madejski Stadium 1,000 home fans instantly stood up and sang “We’re shit and we’re sick of it”. Less than three months later, when Scunthorpe took the lead against Reading at Glanford Park, 1,000 travelling fans instantly stood up and sang “Come on, Reading”. With Reading in much the same place in the Second Division relegation battle, why the transformation in mood?
In some measure it has been down to the fans themselves taking a wretched situation by the scruff of the neck. Relegation in 1998 was followed by the move to the Madejski Stadium (known by some as the Mad House) and a season of aching dullness and frustration; watching players the fans couldn't identify with in an environment that didn’t yet work. This season started worse and even the renaissance after the sacking of Tommy Burns in September was hardly noticeable.
After the appalling home performance against Scunthorpe a small group of fans organised, largely via the internet, “Pants Day”‚ seen as part-protest and part-party. “Players Are Not Trying Sufficiently” was one interpretation. Many fans entered into the fun of it, first waving and then chucking used underwear, as Reading battled out a 2-2 draw with Wrexham.
The national publicity around “Pants” showed that a lot of fans cared and had the energy to get something organised. And, for the most part, the players’ efforts did pick up. But not sufficiently to avoid the more traditional protest of a (rather minor) pitch invasion in mid-January after 12 games without a win. The calls for new manager Alan Pardew’s head were beginning. The stadium built for the Premiership could have been welcoming Rushden and Diamonds in a few months’ time. The club was down to its two friends of last resort: chairman John Madejski and his open wallet, and the unswerving loyalty of the hardcore 5,000.
Inspired by the energy thrown into Pants Day the supporters club gathered together all the different fan groups for a meeting, symbolically held in the pub on the corner of what was Elm Park. Here it was decided to pool resources behind the twin aims of getting right behind the relegation-threatened team and of bringing some fun back to football in Reading. It’s an alliance of groups which now travels under the new banner of URZ (based on the old cry of “You Rs”).
It has been argued that football matches, particularly in the lower divisions, need to be “events” to work to attract a large crowd. If the football alone cannot justify this sense, and 19th-placed Scunthorpe versus 17th-placed Reading frankly struggles on its own merits, then it is down to the fans to create the event. With a bit of cyber-oomph and a local paper front page story, a big support went up to Glanford Park and cheered the team back from two down to get a draw. A point saved and a grateful club paid an unplanned draw bonus.
The next URZ theme day, scheduled for March 4, sees Reading attempting to “out-seaside” Bournemouth in a stadium full of Hawaiian shirts, shades and beach music. It’s not exactly the stuff that would delight JB Priestley or Arthur Hopcraft but look out for the gate figure – did it make a difference? Look out for the results: so far post-URZ it’s three wins and two draws from five, our best run of the season.
URZ works firstly through co-operation between all the different fan groups and the club, and secondly because ideas come from the bottom up and not top down (the club). Where it goes and how long it lasts is impossible to say but already fans outside the core group are developing their own ideas: how can you manage the madness at the Mad House?
Didcot Triangle
Look at a map of England, go left from London and you’ll come across a footballing desert stretching across Berkshire, Oxfordshire, Wiltshire and Somerset. Only three oases of league football offer succour to the parched lower division journeyman and many a camel towards the end of its career has found refreshment in Oxford, Reading or Swindon. In the middle of the three lies Didcot, the railway junction which links them, and this has persuaded some to call this area the Didcot Triangle.
I moved to Oxford in September 1965, missing by a few weeks their first competitive match with Swindon, a 0-0 draw which attracted over 20,000 to the County Ground. Oxford were in only their fourth season in the League and had just been promoted to the Third Division, while Swindon had dropped from the Second to join them. I’m not sure if that first meeting was regarded at the time as a local derby, but by the time Swindon achieved their memorable win over Arsenal in the 1969 League Cup final the rivalry was well established and I was given a hard time at school for revealing my pleasure at the outcome, having always hated Arsenal.
Quite why there should be this mutual loathing remains a mystery to me and I have never been able to take it very seriously. Surely the point of a local derby is to be able to mock your rivals at work or school on the Monday morning. But nobody from Oxford would ever have any reason to travel the 20-odd miles to the home of the enemy other than to watch the game, and I’m sure the reverse is true as well. I’ve only ever met two Swindon supporters and that was in London.
Perhaps in somewhere like Kingston Bagpuize there are families torn asunder by split loyalties to the yellow and the red, but somehow I doubt it. Nevertheless, look at any fanzine or website of the two clubs and you will find endless expressions of hatred, invective and depressingly unoriginal songs “to the tune of Nicknack Paddywack” lovingly reproduced.
Reading tend to get a bit left out in all of this and they appear to have some difficulty in deciding who they really don’t like. They used to have a thing about Aldershot, but clearly that’s no longer an option. Wycombe might offer some potential if anybody could work out where the place is or if anybody supports them enough to bother. Reading fanzines make plaintive references to the Pox and the Swine, but nobody’s really listening. The only truly convincing animosity to be found is directed at their former managers Mark McGhee and Tommy Burns.
However, in any examination of relationships between Reading and Oxford, the ample figure of Robert Maxwell is bound to surface. On March 16, 1983, the then owner of Oxford announced that he was on the verge of taking a controlling interest in Reading, which would lead to a merger of the two clubs. Home games would alternate between the Manor and Elm Park until a new ground could be built, Didcot being the favoured site. The new club would be called Thames Valley Royals. Both sets of supporters were united in outrage at the proposal and when the teams met at the Manor on May 2 the whole ground joined together to let Captain Bob know what they thought of his scheme. A few days later the Reading chairman resigned and Maxwell failed to acquire the shares he needed. Oh, and Reading were relegated.
This was the start of a brief period when Oxford threatened to establish themselves as the dominant team of the three. For 20 years or so the clubs had drifted up and down the lower divisions without making too much of an impact, but suddenly Maxwell’s money and some shrewd purchases by Jim Smith saw Oxford win back-to-back championships and start the 1985-86 season in the top flight, something neither Reading nor Swindon had achieved in 65 years as League clubs. Swindon, indeed were languishing in the Fourth that year, with Reading in the Third. In a further twist, Oxford had appointed the former Reading manager Maurice Evans to take over when Smith decided he’d had enough of Maxwell’s interference and moved to QPR.
It turned out to be a year of celebration for all three clubs. While Oxford visited Wembley for the first (and probably only) time, winning the Milk Cup in some style against Jim Smith’s new team, and then survived in the First Division with a last match victory over Arsenal, Reading were winning their first 13 games and walking away with the Third Division championship, while Swindon managed to amass 102 points to win the Fourth.
Within a couple of years, Oxford’s dreams of becoming the permanent apex of the triangle faded as Maxwell concentrated his resources on his new toy, Derby County. Now it was Swindon who were top dogs – disgracefully denied their place in the First Division in 1990 because of “financial irregularities”, they finally made it to what was by that time the Premiership three years later under Glenn Hoddle. No amount of prayer could have kept them there for more than one season, so Glenn departed for Chelsea and Swindon slid down the hypotenuse. Then it was Reading’s turn. Foolishly they chose to finish runners-up in 1995, the year when only one team gained automatic promotion to the Premiership. Even more foolishly, they threw away a 2-0 lead and missed a penalty in the play-off final against Bolton. Two years later, after Swindon and Oxford had finished first and second in the Second Division, the three clubs all met for the first time in 15 years, neatly finishing between 17th and 19th – an equilateral triangle once again.
This year they’re together again (although one division lower) but it looks like being the last time for a while. Reading have the Mad Stad, a top-of the-range hatchback of a new stadium which regularly pulls in crowds over 10,000, and an enthusiastic if egotistical chairman prepared to spend money on proven performers like Martin Butler and Jamie Cureton. If they don’t go up this season they’ll probably be able to buy their way up next year.
Swindon, while they boast in Danny Invincible the footballer with the best name ever, show few signs of halting their slide. Karren Brady’s dad may have rescued them from bankruptcy but talk of a new stadium somewhere on the outskirts of town seems far-fetched, particularly in the light of their recent attendances of just three or four thousand.
Oxford are in an even sorrier state. Work may have restarted on the rusting bones of their new ground at Minchery Farm, but whether by next season they’ll have a team capable of playing in it looks questionable. The way they’ve been performing this year, the surprise is not that they have so few points but that they’ve managed to acquire any at all with a ragbag of free transfers, loans, youth players and in Steve Anthrobus a “striker” who has scored two league goals in 40-odd games.
Those few fans who remain are worried about staying up next season, having already written off this campaign. Their only hope is that Swindon will be dragged down too. Firoz Kassam put in just enough cash to keep the club afloat but shows no sign of releasing any funds for players, which made Joe Kinnear’s brief role as a talent spotter somewhat superfluous. The area can ill-afford to lose any of these League clubs but for one at least the Conference, if not extinction, is looming.
1993-94 Division Two season when Reading cruised to the title
Reading became the first side to win the championships of the Second, Third, Third (South) and Fourth Divisions (a feat Brighton would later match). The momentum continued almost throughout 1994-95, when they would finish just behind First Division champions Middlesbrough, but fail to be promoted because the Premiership was cutting its size. An extra-time 4-3 play-off final defeat by Bolton would rub further salt in their wounds. Chairman John Madejski would soon move the team to its new Madejstic stadium. This was also the last season when all Football League sides wore shirts numbered up to 11, as squad numbering became permissible for the following season.
