Go to any Reading match, and you will hear: “ONE-OH-SIX, ONE-OH-SIX, READING FC, PLAYING FOOTBALL THE COPPELL WAY!” sung by fans of all ages, including those far too young to remember when we made footballing history in 2006.
That record-breaking 106-point season has an immortal life of its own in Berkshire. Its presence is felt in random lines from that campaign’s End of Season DVD that my brother and I still drop seamlessly into conversation. It still breathes in the fact that we will begin our meetups in the 2020s with: “So, I was reading James Harper’s Wikipedia the other day…” And its beating heart could be felt in every tennis ball thrown onto the pitch in protest back in September 2023. If we hadn’t seen such riches, we could live with being poor…
It lives on most vividly in my mind’s eye, though. Not just because of the glory but also because of how wonderfully unexpected the whole thing was.
“It’s exactly the same as last season!”
That is the voice of 14-year-old me. It’s August 6th, 2005, and I have just slumped down into my seat on the bus, waiting to be driven away from the Madejski Stadium, where Reading have just conceded a 90th-minute winner to Plymouth Argyle on the opening day of the Championship campaign.
That afternoon was of the warm, sunny August kind that we all associate with opening days of the season. It had begun with my dad, brothers, and me taking the same stroll to the same bus stop where we and many of the same faces waited for the same old bus (which was late, as always) to take us to the stadium. I slalomed through the crowded concourse, trying to ignore the smells of those familiar hot dogs and that one particular brand of cigarettes that smelled nice—there was only one, I never identified it. They only served as a distraction for the scent I was waiting for—the grass on that freshly cut, freshly laid pitch. That physical reminder that this was meant to be the start of something new. We sat in the same seats to watch what was largely the same team that had fallen short a matter of weeks before. They fell short again. Reading 1–2 Plymouth Argyle.
