Reading 1 v 0 Everton    -    18th August 2007

By Horse (Alec Swansborough)

 Reading v Everton - From The Horse’s Mouth.

 The day started off at 10:55, I left home taking the short walk to London Road where Dennis, our driver for the day was to pick me up. Den pulled up at 11:00 on the dot - Perfect timing. Moving on to pick up Eddie, Mark & Jason (Mark’s step son to be - or something like that).

 11:15 at Eddies house, everyone on board so off we go to our meeting point for the day ‘The Swan’ in Three Mile Cross. Following the A3 past Petersfield, then onto more sedate country roads through Selbourne, Alton & Hook.

 The journey took around an hour and in that time we discussed the merits of Davie’s summer signings, whether the Yak would sign & would the signing of Manny evolve into another ‘Tevesgate’?, what formation we should play, what our best line up is etc., etc., etc. It’s the sort of conversation we have at every match. Obviously the Kirby vote was discussed, but I won’t make any comments about that in this report – you can form your own opinions.

 The Swan proved to be an excellent choice, a selection of six real ales to cater for the needs of us ‘men of a certain age’, of  which yours truly fully intended to have his fill. The food was good too, with jumbo sausage & chilli con carne being the favourites. There was a friendly relaxed atmosphere with both sets of fans mingling in great expectation of the coming match.

 For the egg-chasers among us, The Swan is also the home of Jumbo, an Irish Wolfhound, the official mascot of London Irish Rugby Club – who also play their home matches at the Madejski Stadium. 

We were assured that the walk to the ground would take 15-20 minutes, so we left The Swan at 2:15 with grey clouds overhead but no rain. We arrived at the ground and joined the queues at 2:40, which were very slow due to over officious stewarding. That’s a walk of 25 mins by my reckoning.

 The match itself was a fairly lack-lustre affair; the Reading team proved to be a tight unit and difficult to break down, they won most of the mid-field battles, harried and closed down our players very quickly – similar to Everton in recent seasons. Everton to their credit tended to play the better football and did most of the attacking, but some how they were never really ‘at the races today’ and didn’t really look like scoring. One exception to this was an Arteta effort that came back off the cross bar onto the defenders arm – a stone wall penalty in my royal  blue eyes – only to fall at the feet of AJ who could only scuff it onto the post. I knew then we weren’t going to score today. 

With the match over our gloom was compounded with the 25min walk back to the pub in horrible driving drizzle that seemed to get into every little  crease & crevice. The dark & dank weather seemed to reflect the match we had just seen, the day just couldn’t get worse .

 WRONG!!!

 To my horror The Swan was closed and I was in desperate need to drown my sorrows. Den & I found some shelter and waited for Eddie, Mark & Jason. We took our coats off to let them dry out before getting in to the car.

 Eddie, Mark & Jason soon turned up, so off  to Basingstoke we go to drop Jason Off. Then off to find a pub. We settled for ‘The French Horn’ in Alton, a pub that both me & Eddie had driven past many times but never really had the opportunity to go in. It turned out to be another good pub with a fine selection of real ale and some nutter dressed as Obi-Wan Kenobi. Oh yes, it was here that Den remembered his coat was still back at The Swan – so another trip to Reading for him in the coming week.

 Over a couple more pints our spirits were raised by tales of Mark’s exploits as a youth during the time he was in a band in the late 70’s early 80’s, and more recently in the pub trade. His book “Confessions Of A Pub Manager” will be a best seller if ever it gets written - I now realise what a sheltered life I have led. I’m not sure if all the stories were true, but in my beer soaked mind it didn’t matter, I don’t care, the gloom of defeat had been lifted and I now see Mark in a new light! and am now happily looking forward to my next match, hopefully meeting up with some of you guys on the mini-bus

 I hope that who ever writes the next match report has a better game to review, but to me the match is actually only a small part of the day. The most important thing for me is to catch up with a lot of good blokes who share my passion for Everton and enjoy a good pint and a chin-wag.

 I may not be a Scouser but I was born to be blue, and proud to say I AM AN EVERTONION.

Horse.