Reading from Reading

Hopperational details
Date & Venue	Saturday 12 May 2012 at Englefield Road, Theale.
Result	Theale 2 South Reading 5
Competition	Reading Senior League (Step 7).
Hopping	I am here, at lifetime venue #465, because I am on the way to a social event in the Midlands and the divisional title is South Reading’s to lose.
This match in one sentence
A comfortable championship-clinching win for the visitors in the final game of the season, so they did enough to render another result elsewhere meaningless.
So what?
South Reading win the division by one point.  Theale finish 10th.
The drama unfolds
At the start of the day, Westwood United were leading the division by two points from South Reading but with no more games, and Woodcote SR follow in third, three points behind Westwood and guaranteed to have a better GD if they won their last match today at Highmoor Ibis Reserves. So we have two games, three outcomes for each, leading to nine possibilities: Theale v S Readiing Highmoor Ibis Res v Woodcote SR Title Outcome: Champions Theale win HI win Westwood U Theale win Draw Westwood U Theale win Woodcote SR win Woodcote SR Draw HI win Westwood U Draw Draw Westwood U Draw Woodcote SR win Woodcote SR S Reading win HI win South Reading S Reading win Draw South Reading S Reading win Woodcote SR win South Reading South Reading have to win, and any win gives them the title irrespective of the other result.  Woodcote SR have to win, and hope that South Reading don’t win.  Westwood have to watch and hope that neither South Reading nor Woodcote SR win. Firstly, time for some village cricket on the adjacent pitch … They are probably still playing.  South Reading, meanwhile were warming up very professionally and had all their balls in a proper storage bag.  They completed the process and went inside just as Theale’s players were stamping out a cigarette or two in the car park.  As I walked round the pitch, eight of them wandered out aimlessly, and some semblance of a warm-up began with ten players five minutes before the kickoff.  The last Theale player was closely followed by the officials and the South Reading team.  Taken all together, the players, officials, fans and fans’ dogs of Westwood United and Woodcote SR should probably have abandoned all thoughts of the title there and then.  It really did not look promising. South Reading, in orange-and-black, kicked with the wind in the first half.  The last-minute Theale instructions had been to “sit tight for twenty minutes”.  Here’s a scene setter clip of them ignoring this and trying to score. The swirly wind was a factor in South Reading’s opening goal after 8 minutes.  A bouncy ball was misjudged, letting in number 7 Raymond Spence for an easy but well-taken goal.  0-1 Theale hit back immediately and forced a sharp save from the South Reading goalkeeper.  As the ball bounced around, it was flicked in from near the touchline.  The lino’s flag, however, protected the lead. Much of the rest of the first half had Theale on the back foot, being pressed high up the pitch, but South Reading lacked the final quality ball.  Their number 9 missed a half-chance and they were not at all fluent.  Theale would fancy their second half chances with the wind, I thought. However, some of the aforementioned wind was removed from Theale sails ten minutes before the break.  South Reading’s number 3 made another attacking run down the left.  His effort was blocked but he retrieved the ball at the touchline and played it back.  His teammate’s hanging cross fell nicely for number 10 to glide a header in to the corner.  0-2 at half-time Despair and ecstasy - the second goal is celebrated except by the Theale goalkeeper Number 10 grabbed a half-time cigarette before joining the team talk out on the pitch.  If anything dramatic was going to happen, Theale needed to score early in the second half, and I wandered in the direction of the goal they were attacking.  My second clip is therefore as far as it is possible to be from South Reading’s third goal, scored after 50 mins and again by Spence, after a disallowed goal and five minutes of optimistic Theale pressure. 0-3 The fourth came after 62 mins, a mazy dribble and well-placed shot from number 11 so I now started to look for the helicopter.  I won’t tell you what the Theale goalkeeper said when he found out there were still over 20 minutes to play.  0-4 Helicopter false alarm moment after 65 minutes We then had a few moments of comedy.  A defensive mix-up handed Theale’s Ibrahim Koroma a goal on a plate.  1-4 South Reading’s two-goal hero Spence was subbed for a hug shortly after complaining to a colleague that he had been running certain appendages off, and then suddenly the margin was down to two with 10 minutes to go as Chris Bark scored for Theale.  2-4 Fortunately for South Reading, they quickly extinguished any Phoenix-type aspirations with a well taken goal by number 6 from the left corner of the box and the visitors closed out the game with no other scares.  Final score 2-5 For the record, scorers 10, 11 and 6 are Ben Lyden, Kyle Roberts and James Weston, but I could not say in which order.  Therefore, South Reading duly won their title, the trophy appeared from a cardboard box, the ref helped to photograph the presentation (and hopefully I am in the background), Mrs Dow (clearly a very important person in Reading football) joined the team photo, and then the team waited respectfully while she retired to a safe distance before the obligatory bubbly shot.  A future in the Hellenic Division One East or the Combined Counties Division One may await.  I have no idea what happened in the cricket. Hope I was smiling ... It is against league rules to splatter Mrs Dow with carbonated alcoholic beverages... ... so she retires to a safe distance before corks pop! Acknowledgement to the league website for helping with partial identification of the scorers, which also told me that the Highmoor/Woodcote game was postponed anyway.  Woodcote can finish second if they win it.
What Next?
I will try to find something meaningful to watch next Saturday.