Playoffs not as magical

[Handsome Man]

If the play-offs don't get you excited then go back to following Man Utd or Chelsea. This is what football is all about. Promotion always feels brilliant and this season will be no different.

[The Cap]

PEARCEY wrote:
HNA seems very flat at the moment.

Generally I would say that's fair comment but then again you also have to wonder why?

Coppell, tactics, just missing out on auto promo, credit crunch, Stretch winning POS and looking....well,flat. God help us if we get spanked in today's game. Now that will be depression city.

[Royal Rother]

I desperately want us to win the play offs as it'll be exciting and fun and a great and emotional end to the season (and it'll possibly make WR shut the fcuk up for a few weeks).

However, I also want to see Robson-Kanu, Sigurdsson, Church, Kelly, Pearce, Karacan et al play lots of games for RFC next season which is very unlikely to happen if we go up; so all in all, although I want to win promotion I'm really not too fussed about us actually playing in the PL.

If you see what I mean.

[Deathy]

As a semi-plastic, I remember the game I truly fell for Reading and promised I would never leave the club I love. Reading till I die. It was the 95 playoff. It was incredibly magical. We were a tiny team in a crappy stadium and had never been to those dizzy heights. It was nothing short of a magical experience. We were a couple of hours away from making history: a small club in the world's best league. We went 2-0 and a penalty up and most of us probably thought we were dreaming. It was so magical and unbelievable that the score hadn't really kicked in for me until Bolton equalised and I wonder if the Reading players that day felt the same.

Contrast that with today.

I just don't feel anywhere near that magic or nervousness this time round. We've already been to the promised land and put in a damn good show there. It's no longer some inconceivable magical place. To many (most of the neo-plastics) it's where we belong. And maybe they're right. This time I'm not thinking "oh my God this is too good to be true" but rather "damn, we belong up there, we really ought to win this". And if we don't then as long as we keep Coppell and allow a rebuild over the next 2-3 years we'll likely go up again anyway. So it'll never have the same significance that Wembley '95 had.

I wonder if it's a good thing we're potentially so much more down to earth about it this time as hopefully we won't get all jittery if we're 2-0 up at Wembley. I suspect it will do us good. Who knows.

It just feels so so different.

Good post mate, and pretty much how I feel too. The 'been there, done that' syndrome.
I just don't enjoy football half as much as I used too. I just not fussed any more.

I think it's a culmination of a lot of things. Family and friends sitting elsewhere in the ground due to keeping season tickets, or changing them, or you kept yours and they didn't theirs and therefore now you sit alone. The match day experience is shit, no other word for it. Flat atmospheres, lack of passionate support, over paid egotistical players that don't care, they think they've made it...

I'll sulk if we flop in the play-offs, but I'll be over it within minutes.

[I was there at Elm Park]

I desperately want us to win the play offs as it'll be exciting and fun and a great and emotional end to the season.

However, I also want to see Robson-Kanu, Sigurdsson, Church, Kelly, Pearce, Karacan et al play lots of games for RFC next season which is very unlikely to happen if we go up; so all in all, although I want to win promotion I'm really not too fussed about us actually playing in the PL.

That is exactly how I feel.

[Woodcote Royal]

I desperately want us to win the play offs as it'll be exciting and fun and a great and emotional end to the season (and it'll possibly make WR shut the fcuk up for a few weeks).

Only when we have a manager who can take this club forward and that isn't Steve Coppell regardless of what happens in these playoffs.

[Royal Rother]

Getting promotion to the PL for the 2nd time in 4 years (if it should happen) wouldn't be taking the club forward then?