This is the first piece in my series attempting to watch every senior men’s and women’s team at home this season – I already have the return fixture for these two at Lowther Road marked for November. Why am I doing this? Why not? But I wrote a kick-off piece here.
The place to start a voyage of discovery, I think, is in the pub.
That and other opinions will be available throughout this series of articles about Berkshire’s football clubs and my journey in and around them.
To The Nag’s Head then, in central Reading. There are – at the time of writing – 89 pubs called ‘The Nag’s Head’ according to pubnames.co.uk (including one in Sunningdale and another in Newbury), this one being undoubtedly the best of them (I’ll have no argument on this – if you want to start a project to visit and rank every pub in the country call The Nag’s Head, that’s your call to make).
It’s a place that is central to this premise. As a pub, it is a chameleon. It’s whatever you want it to be. Sports bar: check, ale house, check, garden party: check, quiet place to read a book: check, you name it, the place will cater – and on Tuesday nights and Saturday’s it’s the start and end point for fans of Reading Football Club and their journey to and from the Select Car Leasing Stadium.
I’ve been frequenting the pub for at least 10, maybe 15 of it’s 20 years. The place nestles nicely into that feeling of grassroots football. It’s in an unassuming part of town, part of the Russell Street/Castle Hill/Oxford Road Conservation Area (more about that here) and just off the bustling and diverse artery of Reading – The Oxford Road – it’s also on a bus route which is handy (2/2a and 26 if you are interested). A community hub, a slightly thrown together feel that rather than being off putting, levels the playing field and everyone within it. There are groups of course at different tables, but no one is to bothered about what the place looks like, it’s much deeper.
There’s a history of Reading in imagery on the walls – old pictures, memorabilia from Reading FC’s Elm Park ground which would have been a short walk away. There’s reminders of London Irish’s tenancy in the town and there are board games, books, darts, huge TVs which somehow don’t dilute the atmosphere (unless there’s a really big game on and that’s why everyone is there of course),a lot of pump clips everywhere. It must be an absolute nightmare to dust.
All of those words though don’t really do justice to the simplicity of a busy bustling pub. Really great beer, lager, cider, crisps, pork scratchings, and that’s it. No more, no less. 24 hours before my latest visit, a social media post had gone out from the pubs landlord Jody Oates, saying that after a lot of effort, time and begging, he and the team behind the pub had bought the lease as their 20 year tenancy was coming to an end.
That’s the spirit of the place. Few would have known it was at risk. As an institution of Reading (see also Sweeney & Todd pies, Blue Collar Food Market, the Purple Turtle), I’m sure there would have been an uprising, though of course the leaseholder can sell to whoever they like. Still, no external fuss, no pleas, it’s sorted. We carry on as normal.
Feels very non-league to me, I thought as I finished off my Black IPA before heading down to Reading City (yes I can hear your eyes rolling as you note ‘of course he’s starting at Reading City, I make no apologies for this, I live here!) – a note to fellow travellers who fancy this after my overlong intro, take the bus, there’s a thousand of them along the Oxford Road. It might look close on a map but the journey from the Nags to the Rivermoor is a lot further than you think (and it’s a mistake I’ve made before).
“No, it’s not a city”
Reading City FC then. No it’s not a city. Yes it is the biggest town in the country without city status. Yes it’s been applied for at least three times, beaten most recently by tiny St Asaph (population: 3,485) in Wales. More recently in local government disappointment, a city of Culture bid barely got off the drawing board. Check out The Reading Reporter here for more on that.
Think of the ‘City’ moniker as an ambition. Or just think of it as a name. We humans are forever naming stuff aren’t we? It’s just a name. Relax.
Until 2018, this club was Highmoor-IBIS when a rebrand put the club on a path of positive growth.
I’ve a complicated relationship with The Rivermoor (aka Scours Lane). I saw my beloved 90s/2000s Bracknell Town relegated there on the final day of a season by the now defunct Reading Town in front of about 20 people. And I’ve been vocal in the past about how much it’s not very nice (although, thankfully, on long-since-deleted internet forums): the barbed wire, the endless concrete.
That paints a picture of what it was. Since the birth of ‘City’, something has changed. There is genuinely no place I’d rather be on one of the opening midweek nights of a season. Dappled sunlight, the thunder of Brunel’s Great Western Railway in the background, the effort and volunteer hours that had gone into making it a better place to spend some time.
I’ve said this out loud quite a lot. It often feels like there are more people at The Rivermoor early in the season than there really are. Groups file in through the turnstiles, and on this occasion both sides were open to keep up with the queue which was building quickly for a local derby.
The official attendance is 235. In recorded attendances last season, only one game beat this total – the 240 that attended the Wednesday night 4-0 defeat to.. Wokingham Town.
Vicky Pyke is the equivalent of a Luka Modric in the running of the club. Unsung, but a lynch pin, and she’s on the gate this time taking cash and card as the crowds roll in.
The Rivermoor is a disconcertingly big for a non-league football ground. It’s not tight, it’s not claustraphobic, surrounded by houses or teetering on the edge of a ground-grading based on whether there was room for another 100 seats that won’t ever be used.
If I were to ever paraphrase a quote from Douglas Adams, it would be the famous one from Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy about space: “The Rivermoor is big. You just won’t believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it’s a long way down the road to the chemist’s, but that’s just peanuts to The Rivermoor.”
The concrete is now a haven for my daughter who loves scooting and cycling up and down while I watch the football, the open spaces outside the pitch area are brilliant for kids to have a kick-around without infurating the adults everytime the ball accidentally enters the field of play, although I still marvel at any player who can look across that pitch and not already feel mentally exhausted by it’s apparent size (this is something that used to happen to me during my Bracknell Sunday League days. I liked the close cropped pitches surrounded by trees such as Easthampstead Crem, rather than Wildridings wide expanse, which felt much, much larger).
There’s room for serious fans, the Reading City Groundhoppers occupy the space the home team are attacking – as they should – behind the goal is one of the simple pleasures of going to a non-league game. It’s probably the worst vantage point to watch, every attack on your goal involves a lot of squinting and hope, but every attack? Well as the cliche goes ‘the fans sucked the ball into the net’.
The Reading City fans have a drum. This probably annoys a lot of people. I think it’s wonderful and later I go and seek out the drummer who turns out to be a young lad who has clearly practicied.
But there’s also room for casual fans. At the risk of turning everything a bit ‘Dulwich Hamlet’, last the season I posed question that there was an unquantifable ‘vibe’ to the club. And maybe now I know having spoken to a few regulars on this visit.
“This is indie football,” I overheard one fan saying.
Most crowds at non-league clubs involve a couple of groups of people, youngsters from the junior teams who’ve got the bug, disenfranchised supporters of professional football clubs, groundhoppers and players parents. But ‘The Cityzens’ have a bit more than that.
“This kind of thing means much more to me than watching a random Premiership team play, absolutely”
Andrew Fursedon is a regular at The Rivermoor, but told me: “The first time I came down was because one of my mates was coming down. He basically sold it to me as ‘it’s just a lovely pint by the river, the chairman works the fryer and does the chips.’ Come down, it’s just a nice afternoon out, and that kind of sold it to me.
“The fact that you could just walk in, pop your pint on the wall, move it out of the way when the ball comes over, bring your dog down. It’s more of a day out, more than the football, to be honest,” he adds.
Does Reading City winning or losing affect your Sunday? I ask. “Not massively, no,” he replies.
In the ultra-hyped world of modern football, that answer surprised me. I guess it shouldn’t. It didn’t mean that it the games didn’t mean anything to him, as he explained: “I didn’t grow up with football. My dad always considered it to be a hooligans game, probably wrongly, in the 80s and 90s and so we just never had football in the house.
“I never really played football at lunch at school, so I don’t support a team. I haven’t grown up supporting a team which is why this kind of thing means more to me, I think, than watching a Premiership game. If I watch England or Wales play and that kind of means something, but this kind of thing means much more to me than watching a random Premiership team play, absolutely.
“But I do care. I like the fact that people can bring their kids down and stuff and get them into it, it is a nice community and the standard of football is pretty good, you know. They all care [referencing the players] and they all take care of themselves, I saw some videos of them having a celebration last year and a Man of the Match got given a yard of ale and he took a sip and handed it back! They’re all personal trainers, aren’t they!”
Another regular, Karl Joseph said: “We all used to go to the [Reading nightclub institution] After Dark and this has replaced the After Dark, this is just like our social thing and there happens to be football in the background. My wife comes along, tt’s on our doorstep, but she won’t watch it [on television] when we’re at home!”
It’s insight I’d never considered. Football as a social glue. Well, I suppose, going to the football is one of the original social glues, but instead of deep fanaticism, it’s an excuse to gather.
“Shane Cooper-Clark has given many Berkshire football fans incredible memories”
All of this quite neatly hides the fact the game hasn’t grabbed my attention despite knowing both clubs and the people behind them really well. At the time of writing all this down, City top the table after five games, but this, their second game came after a 2-1 opening day defeat at Harefield United.
A win was pretty-much required after Football in Berkshire had published an article by local reporting legend Dave Wright titled: Reading City boss targets ‘going one better’ as Combined Counties League kicks off, just prior to the season starting.
Shane Cooper-Clark has given many Berkshire football fans incredible memories, but it was another player with FA Vase recognition that did the damage for City. Joel Valentin – formerly of Binfield who once told me he travelled back from university in Nottingham during the Moles run to the FA Vase Final – was the man on the score sheet, wheeling away in to the expanse behind the goal to celebrate with supporters on 64 minutes.
City had weathered an early storm from Wokingham to finish the first half the better side, but lost Junior Da Cruz after a high boot on Ellis Cowd, which blunted their forward line.
The Sumas still had Sean Moore (more FA Vase heroics – in fact there were five players on the pitch who had either won or featured in an FA Vase Final at Wembley in this game), and he’ll probably still be wondering now how he didn’t get on the end of a cross late in the second half to level things up.
A draw would probably have been about right. But Reading took the three points and have a future that includes another FA Cup run and a bye to the Third Round Proper of the Vase after reaching the Fourth Round last season.
This is the first piece in my series attempting to watch every senior men’s and women’s team at home this season – I already have the return fixture for these two at Lowther Road marked for November. Why am I doing this? Why not? But I wrote a kick-off piece here.
