1985/86 and all that

[bloody Volvo driver]

I remember us all being gob smacked when Tricky Trev trotted onto the pitch at Lincoln. He had no chance of playing due to his injury, yet still pulled his boots on, played typically cr@p and scored! No way in a month of Sundays, any of our prima donna's would be @arsed to do that today.

Was one of about 100 Royals at our next league game, our first defeat, in the cold mist at our, then, bogey team, Bury. Lost 1-3. It was dismal. Undone by their wonder kid at the time, Craig Madden, IIRC.

Well thats 2 out of the 100 or so sorted, I was there too. Craig Madden played for Bury at the time but I seemed to recall Winston White, a beast of an old fashioned centre forward doing the damage scoring twice.

Strangely and often forgotten, if we had won that game we would have also taken the record for most consecutive away wins from the start of a season, we'd won 7 on the spin, but the 8th alluded us.

And yes it was indeed dismal.

[BR2]

Thanks to the poster for bringing that memory back.
The worst part that was referred to was the injury to Super Trev.
We were there at Bristol City when (?Turner) elbowed Trevor in the throat at a corner,something that had a lasting effect on the player and we didn't even get a penalty.
Whether that was the same season I don't know.

Wolves have played quite a significant part in our fairly recent history:-
That first game back in Div 1 (Championship)
That game mentioned in the article
The game when we beat them in the League Cup with Wolves then a top level side
The McGhee games.

[Gordons Cumming]

I remember Jerry Williams scoring late against Blackpool in the first home game............little did we know then........

[Jackson Corner]

I remember thinking at the time how is this happening? We just seemed to scrape through every game and super Trev would nik the winner. It's ironic one of the best performances was against Wolves who got an undeserved draw. Thanks for posting the link. For once a national paper has written a well researched and interesting article about our recent past.

[No Fixed Abode]

http://www.theguardian.com/football/blog/2013/oct/14/forgotten-story-reading-1985-86-season

And there was me thinking Reading were formed in 2005.

[Ark Royal]

[RoyalBlue]

Remember the massive convoy of coaches rolling into Newport and all of the locals coming out to gawp. Can also recall the game itself being pretty tense until Mad Max popped up with the second - then party time 'cos the record was ours.

Nowhere near as many coaches for the game at Lincoln (all the glory hunters had had their day by then).

Remember the T shirt (might still have it somewhere) which used a picture/headline from the EP. It had the league table at the end of our run and IIR the headline 'Reading top the rest nowhere'.

[RoyalBlue]

Great article. Brought back many very happy memories. There were so many in that team, Senior is clearly picked out in the article for the reason that he was such a prolific goalscorer, that were not particularly striking footballers in any way at all and somehow they gelled remarkably well. Jerry Williams was an awful centre forward and I loved it that he was made into a pretty good right back and then a winger. Great to see the name of Mark White mentioned as well, best left back ever played for the club in my opinion, or, well, certainly up there.
Just slightly off topic, am I the only one, but wasn't Stuart Beavon the first on the team sheet and, yet, he flattered to deceive?

Beavon was another in the Caskey mould (well not quite physically!) and lothers of that ilk who have followed since- a very skilful, intelligent footballer with great vision and passing, frequently let down by the fact that those alongside him in the team weren't anywhere near as good in terms of footballing talent (they made up for it with bags of character & exceptionally high workrate).

[ayjaydee]

Great article. Brought back many very happy memories. There were so many in that team, Senior is clearly picked out in the article for the reason that he was such a prolific goalscorer, that were not particularly striking footballers in any way at all and somehow they gelled remarkably well. Jerry Williams was an awful centre forward and I loved it that he was made into a pretty good right back and then a winger. Great to see the name of Mark White mentioned as well, best left back ever played for the club in my opinion, or, well, certainly up there.
Just slightly off topic, am I the only one, but wasn't Stuart Beavon the first on the team sheet and, yet, he flattered to deceive?

Stuart Beavon was a creative midfielder who did not really fit with the Branfoot plan of knocking up the channels for wingers to chase and get a cross into Trev.

[Pete10]

Nice one Baz . a packed Elm Park.

[11.30 from paddington]

Excellent stuff. That 4-2 mullering of Chesterfield was one of my favourite Elm Park nights and the whole day at Newport was one to remember.

This.

Trev in a blood-stained shirt. His gap-toothed grin and arms aloft. Bloody brilliant night at Elm Park.

That Chesterfield match was my first ever game. The family friend who'd taken me repeatedly reassured me, "We don't always play this well! We normally just play ok for 10 minutes and win."

[Terminal Boardom]

I remember us all being gob smacked when Tricky Trev trotted onto the pitch at Lincoln. He had no chance of playing due to his injury, yet still pulled his boots on, played typically cr@p and scored! No way in a month of Sundays, any of our prima donna's would be @arsed to do that today.

Was one of about 100 Royals at our next league game, our first defeat, in the cold mist at our, then, bogey team, Bury. Lost 1-3. It was dismal. Undone by their wonder kid at the time, Craig Madden, IIRC.

Well thats 2 out of the 100 or so sorted, I was there too. Craig Madden played for Bury at the time but I seemed to recall Winston White, a beast of an old fashioned centre forward doing the damage scoring twice.

Strangely and often forgotten, if we had won that game we would have also taken the record for most consecutive away wins from the start of a season, we'd won 7 on the spin, but the 8th alluded us.

And yes it was indeed dismal.

At half time during the Wolves game, I believe the supporters club had lined up between 20 and 30 coaches for the trip to Bury. On the day, 3 coaches went. Who says Reading fans are fickle?

All I remember of the Bury game is that we were dire.

IMHO, Branfoot's style of play was tolerated rather than embraced. We were all happy when it churned out results but when we got undone, it was ugly.

[strap]

Has anyone else still got the book the Chronicle released of Record Breaking Royals? I thought it was a fabulous book, really well written.

[Ian Royal]

http://www.theguardian.com/football/blog/2013/oct/14/forgotten-story-reading-1985-86-season

And there was me thinking Reading were formed in 2005.

You're confusing us with Chelsea again.

[Ark Royal]

Has anyone else still got the book the Chronicle released of Record Breaking Royals? I thought it was a fabulous book, really well written.

Yes, still got that as well. Great book apart from the photo of Trevor 'scoring' against Plymouth in the 4-3 epic. Wrong end.

[Bandini]

The big problem with the book was the entries for those players who, by the end of the season and the time of the book's publication, had moved on, thus making it unnecessarily difficult to fill in their signature box at the bottom of the page.

[mr_number]

Stuart Beavon was a creative midfielder who did not really fit with the Branfoot plan of knocking up the channels for wingers to chase and get a cross into Trev.

This tactic of knocking the ball into the channels for wingers to chase and get a cross into the box sounds like it was pretty effective. Maybe Nige should consider trying it

[RoyalBlue]

Stuart Beavon was a creative midfielder who did not really fit with the Branfoot plan of knocking up the channels for wingers to chase and get a cross into Trev.

This tactic of knocking the ball into the channels for wingers to chase and get a cross into the box sounds like it was pretty effective. Maybe Nige should consider trying it

Guess what? We went up a division, Branfoot continued to deploy the same tactics, we got found out and were relegated! Sound familiar? So maybe Nige shouldn't consider it, particularly as we don't have a Trevor Senior in our squad!

What's more, probably our best performance that season came when the players reportedly rebelled (some claimed Les Taylor and Neil Smillie were at the fore) and said 'Sod the direct approach, we are at Wembley, the home of football, lets play proper passing football'. Who knows what role Taylor and Smillie may have played in this change of tactics but, IIRC, they didn't play much for us post that game at Wembley.

[teignmouth hoops]

Stuart Beavon was a class act who played some great football for us, it was sometimes the other players who weren't quite on his wavelength
I remember going to both Cardiff, who were struggling big time but still had some very unfriendly fans and trev scoring a hatrick & Newport where we took at least 3500 fans, yet we'd been down there the previous boxing day I think it was and only took a couple of hundred

[AthleticoSpizz]

Stuart Beavon was a creative midfielder who did not really fit with the Branfoot plan of knocking up the channels for wingers to chase and get a cross into Trev.

This tactic of knocking the ball into the channels for wingers to chase and get a cross into the box sounds like it was pretty effective. Maybe Nige should consider trying it

Guess what? We went up a division, Branfoot continued to deploy the same tactics, we got found out and were relegated!

Indeed

But not before we had, had our (then) most ever successful season ever, finishing 13th in Div 2.