No history my arse. 135 years more like. We were just crap for 134.
I did tell you 2006 was going to be an auspicious year.
Reading, the best second-division team since the war, celebrate on a gloomy and grey day in Leicester.Whoever flukes their way up via the playoffs will do it in front of 70 000 at the finest stadium in Britain.
If it needs spelling out, Reading FC, one of the oldest football clubs in the world, today clinched promotion to the top division of English football for the first time in their history. They also achieved this with 6 games to spare, which is better than anyone's done since the war. Not bad for a team whose first match, in 1872, finished in a 0-0 draw against my secondary school.
Without wishing to go overboard, I'd say we can now confirm that Reading are without a shadow of a doubt the best football team in the world ever. Even Chris Tarrant pretty much agrees with me.
This means that:
1. next year if French people ask me who I support I can actually say "Reading" without them saying "what?" Yes Liverpool were my first love, but supporting what was for 8 years my hometown club has far more indie cred and is better for my image. Or so says my stylist.
2. The following statement is true for the first time ever: tonight I wish I was in Reading not Paris.
3. children in small towns like Leeds, Nottingham, or Sheffield, frog sample, will start saying, "yeah, basically I support United / Forest / Wednesday, but my Premiership team is Reading."
To sum up - in a footballing sense, today could not be any more perfect unless Liverpool won the Mersey derby with an own goal from a former Man Utd player. You say what?
posted by Timber @ 8:06 pm
3 comments
3 Comments:
Yes, York City will rejoin the football league in a magnificent stadium in Cardiff. I am hoping to get a flight there, but I am waiting until we get there before I buy my tickets, just in case. When I see teams like Reading, Wigan and Bradford (a few years back) getting into the Premiership, it gives me hope.
If memory serves me correctly, it was Reading we beat before going on to beat Manchester United (yes, York City beat Manchester United) in the cup. I also remember seeing us playing Bradford. Indeed, I remember we drew with them 2-2 several games running. Another current Premiership team I remember seeing us play is Manchester City.
Several years back, York's two professional sports clubs, the football and the rugby side (that's rugby league, but I really don't see why I should be bothered to state the code when the Southerners who play union are pretentious enought not to bother) nearly went bankrupt. The rugby side made an incredible turnaround, and a couple of years ago they narrowly lost a promotion playoff match. Last year they got promoted.
The football club didn't go so well. We won our first four games to go top of Division Three (that's the fourth division, now known as League 2). We still looked in the hunt for the playoffs until Christmas, but we just could not win, and we were relegated to the Conference for the first time on a heartbreaking last day of the season, which I listened to over the internet from my flat in Clichy. This year we look like reaching the playoffs and hopefully one day we will also reach the Premiership.
While I was writing the final sentence, I realised I hadn't checked our result for today. We lost 4-2 at home to Accrington Stanley. Accrington Stanley, who are they? Exactly.
Isn't the conference playoff final usually played at the Britannia stadium in Stoke? Consider verifying this before booking tickets to Cardiff.
WHAT!!! Well it won't be as memorable as when we won a playoff final at Wembley then. Well I better check out where it is. In any case, we've now dropped out of the playoff zone, so we're going to need a few wins if we want to make it. If it is in Stoke, I have an idea as to where I could maybe squat for the night... (that's a hint drop, if a certain guy from Stoke happens to be reading this ;-)).
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