I was there at the old Elm Park (now housing). The Madjeski Stadium is built on an old landfill site and as part of the development they had to apply for a waste management licence, which I had a hand in processing in a former life.
Good day and a rare win at Elm Park. There’s nothing like that feeling of being in a big away following on an open terrace, celebrating an away win and seeing the home crowd silenced. The simple pleasures in life are often the best.
Another good day out. Sat having a few pints outside the train station, Andy Liddell scoring, all in beautiful sunshine. A perfect day out.
Correct PoR, plus with the sun shining and me with just a 6 mile drive home, as I'd just moved to Wokingham nr Reading
It was a good day out. Found it on youtube here: at 1:05:55. Can't see the full following but I remember the away end being very full and noisy and the how warm it was.
Very noisy away end! We were going up and days like that just reinforced the reality. There will have been a good proportion of that following who had NOT “made the long trip down south”, as described by the commentator. We swarmed from all over the south and the midlands on that glorious sunny day. I want those days back again!
I had a bit further - Gloucester - but it wasn’t that far. I hope you wore your red and white the following week to remind the locals!
And me PoR! I do a reasonable proportion of away games anyway but will be doing more when we can. Very much looking forward to more days like this.
Oh don't worry PoR I reminded them all season, especially after the thumping 3-0 win at home the previous August
Good man! Going back even further along Gloating Road, back in the 84/85 season, I wrote to the BBC for the first and only time in my life. I was living at Durrington Walls near Salisbury and BBC South Today was my local news programme, the equivalent of Look North. This was pre-email days of course and they had a letters section in the middle of each programme for irritating people like me to write in and air my views. The day after we knocked Southampton out of the cup with that fantastic win at The Dell I let them know that there was a Happy Northerner amongst them. It was basically me sarcastically sympathising with the fans of three of their teams having seen us beat Reading in the 3rd Round, Brighton in the 4th and then the Saints in the 5th. It was read out in a pseudo-northern accent by the smarmy presenter.
What I remember about that Reading game was beforehand all their fans wishing us good luck, because they didn’t want Mark McGhee’s Wolves to go up (after he left them for Wolves). And the entire ground singing the Mark McGhee song. At 1:08 is their game vs Wolves. They scored twice at the death to leave us on the brink of promotion, the day we beat Charlton I think.
We were at my mates sisters wedding that day in Wakefield. We snook out as early as we could to listen to it on the car radio.