View From The Dolan: Harborough Downed

Ben’s take on a gruelling afternoon in the FA Cup, with Reading eventually seeing off Harborough Town 5-3 at the SCL.

The lead-up to this game had been, in my opinion, a complete and utter circus. Yeah, I get the whole “magic of the cup” propaganda machine, but the whole fixture has been a distraction for us. Damned if we do, damned if we don’t.

The amount of fans I’ve seen saying that we should make sure Harborough Town “have a good day” and all that nonsense is baffling to me. Yes, they are part-time. Yes, they are the underdogs. Yes, they need the money. I mean, any one of those statements could be true of us on any given Saturday. So I was absolutely delighted to get to the stadium, get this done and get on with it.

Before people say “oh, but Ben, didn’t you say you liked home cup games?”, yes I do. But I have not liked the clamour to big up Harborough at the detriment of what we actually needed to do: ie win the flipping game.

So as I was sat in the queue to approach the stadium (oh, the traffic jam wasn’t football traffic, it was a long line of people desperate to fill up their cars from a cut-price American retailer. I mean, who in their right mind goes “Sunday then - best go and fill up the car at a massive industrial warehouse?” Honesty, I hope whoever decided to put it so close to the stadium needs to get a Lynx gifts for Christmas) and the team news filtered through like an amateur chef straining water from some kidney beans, I couldn’t help but feel we were maybe over-qualified to contest the tie.

It seemed a little bit like overkill, given that we had a game just over 48 hours later from this one. Regardless, we had enough to be comfortable and carefree… surely?! The gentle incline up the stadium was littered with badly parked coaches (literally, one was just parked in the middle of the road), half-and-half scarfs (I mean, what?!) and Harborough fans weeing down the side of the bank. It was like the world’s worst stag do. I was just glad to get to my space and trot along to fully open Sir John Madejski Stand.

There had been light rain (basically drizzle) on and off in the lead-up to kick-off and the concourse floor was slick and smooth. For those who wear fashionable trainers (like me), it proved a challenging landscape to master.

Some fans (me) slightly slipped on the moist surface, which caused their arms (mine) to flap about like an unattended hose. Luckily, they (me) had great balance because they probably do yoga regularly (I do) and so the coordination they possess (me) was able to counterbalance their (mine) slip. Well done all.

I chose to nestle in the corner of the SJM Stand - as close to the Dolan as I could. Once again, I found myself glancing across to my seat like a cartoon dog eyeing up some sausages in a window shop owned by an overweight butcher. It’s nearly a month since I’ve been allowed to sit there and that’s sad.

I won’t go into detail about the game (someone else from TTE has done that), but suffice to say the first half aged me horribly. Horribly.

The visiting fans were in full voice, cheering every tackle, throw-in and pass. I can’t say I blame them, but it did become pretty boring pretty quickly. Suffice to say that, at half-time, I was genuinely pretty miserable with the whole thing. I genuinely thought the second prize in the golden gamble would be for that person to be allowed to go home.

The second period was better in that we played… well, better. To be fair, Harborough were physically well prepared, stuck a lot of men behind the ball and stopped us from getting into a rhythm.

I still felt we should have had enough to control the game and, at 3-2, it should have been put to sleep. But of course, the script called for one last piece of chaos in the shape of a late equaliser. To give the visitors credit, there were some premium limbs in that away end, but the overriding feeling of vomit coming up from my intestine and towards my mouth consumed me. At that point, I was ready to buy a t-shirt with the phrase “Why do we bother?” on it.

As Spielberg Time (ET - get it?) commenced, the jumbotron appeared to shut off. Actually, it didn’t appear to: it did shut off. I made the joke (in my head) that they’d only paid for it to be on until 4pm and I laughed internally at this. I thought about shouting it out but that would have been out of character for me so instead I just kept my counsel.

As you’ll know, we won the game. It was arduous, exhausting, at times awkward and embarrassing, but we are - somehow - in the third round of the FA Cup.

A few players got found out; collectively and individually we were poor but the quality we do possess just about got us through. So to close out the circus, if thought I’d leave you with four points:

1. Charlie Savage is becoming a very important player for us (10 goal involvements this season)

2. Andre Garcia should be given a chance to play as one of the front three

3. No one should speak of this game ever again (bar the 15/20 minutes to talk about it on the upcoming TTE pod)

4. Buy a hotdog on the concourse because they are actually pretty good and nice on the wallet/purse/money pouch too

I’m off for a lie down. Until next time.