The Pain Of Losing What Makes Reading Football Club Special

Reading Women’s downgrade to the fifth tier came as a crushing blow, and for Sim, we can’t assume no more damage will be done.

At times like this, you grow to appreciate just how richly vibrant a football club truly is. There’s a multitude of people who have some kind of emotional investment in Reading FC - each with their own account of what this club means to them. Ask a thousand people connected with the club - fans, staff, players, family members of players - about their experience and you’ll get a thousand different answers.

For many though, last week was when it became brutally apparent that their Reading story could be coming to an end. On Friday, The Guardian reported that a last-ditch bid to finance Reading Women had fallen through and the team would subsequently request to leave the Championship. The women’s youth setup was also at jeopardy. On Sunday, Reading confirmed that the Women’s first team would be moving to the fifth tier.

Players, staff members and so many others dedicated to the Women’s team have not only been gravely betrayed, but those responsible didn’t even have the decency to keep them in the loop. Charlie Estcourt and Becky Jane have both publicly confirmed recently that they’ve been left in the dark while the team was on life support.

The degradation of Reading Women has also come as a gut-punch to all those loyal supporters who have given so much to the team over the years. Whether they trek around the country following the team in person or backing the Royals from further afield, the pain is still the same, and so keenly felt.

It’s one thing to see Reading Women relegated from the WSL because they couldn’t quite do enough on the pitch to get over the line. It’s another entirely for the Royals to secure Championship safety a year later - in spite of everything thrown at them - only to have that ripped away by events playing out solely behind closed doors.

I feel particularly for Paul McGreal, who recently wrote for The Tilehurst End about just how vital Reading Women have been for his mental health. The team haven’t just been a one-off boost, but rather a long-term, consistent, valued force for good for him and so many others.

They haven’t just done that as an offshoot of the men’s team. Reading Women built its own reputation and, largely, its own fanbase. Although many supporters inevitably cross over with backing the men’s side, some don’t. And they’ve been left high and dry.

Photo by Andrew Matthews/PA Images via Getty Images

So what’s next? I really don’t know. I really can’t say anything with any real assurance anymore, and that scares me.

In the earlier stages of this tediously, painfully long takeover saga, it felt like we were simply waiting for a course-correction. We were waiting for someone, or some group of people, to take the helm of this ship and get it back on track. It would take no shortage of money, patience and stubbornness to get a takeover done, but the version of Reading Football Club we’ve been so familiar with in the last couple of decades could yet be revitalised. A version that, in truth, we’ve come to take for granted.

And we do take a lot for granted, let’s be honest. Reading having a Women’s team with years in the WSL under its belt, a men’s side familiar with competing for (and gaining) promotion to the Premier League, and a state-of-the-art academy are hardly the norm for a club that spent so much of its history kicking around the third and fourth tiers.

But that’s what made Reading FC stand out from the rest. I’m proud to support a truly special club, one which has created, achieved and sustained so much over the last quarter of a century. For all the jibes we get from opposition fans about how ‘tinpot’ this club is, Reading have also had plenty to envy.

Reading are more than familiar with existential threats though. Most notably, in 1983, Robert Maxwell’s planned merger with Oxford United had to be fought off. A century earlier, Reading faced first the danger of being overtaken by rival district clubs in the 1880s and then that of a breakaway side in the 1890s when the first team controversially went professional.

It’s become painfully obvious that we live in similarly trying times now. We’re no longer just waiting for a refresh, but for someone to stop the bleeding.

Reading Women should have been safe. Unconditionally. Their academy should have been safe. Unconditionally. But if such vital community assets are disposable, then what about the rest of Reading Football Club? How much more damage will we have to suffer?

I’d love to be unreservedly excited about the upcoming men’s season. I certainly can’t wait for the escapism of seeing some actual football being played. This is fortunately a team worth being emotionally invested in and getting behind. The players and management are a credit to this club - they’ve earned that status.

So seeing some of them depart - including but certainly not limited to Ruben Selles, Lewis Wing, Tyler Bindon and Harvey Knibbs - would leave me gutted. But even losing some individuals, as important as they may be in their own right, pales in significance to what else is at stake.

As things stand, we can’t assume we’ll be supporting a club in League One next when 2025/26 comes around. Or that Reading will train at Bearwood. Or that the club will have an academy with Category One status. It’s a weird irony that those last two are the legacy of much-maligned owners: Bearwood was opened by Dai Yongge himself, Category One was initially achieved under Anton Zingarevich. Regardless, they’re under threat.

The bottom line is still that Reading need a takeover in order to survive at all, and then start to get their house in order. But how much damage will be inflicted on this club before we get there?