Readng are proudly announcing that they are about to have their biggest crowd of the season.
Reading's official website is reporting that they have now sold over 20,000 tickets for the visit of Saints on Saturday already eclipsing the 18,500 who watched them play Millwall on the opening day, this of course includes the 4,000 plus tickets Saints have sold.
They are also saying that extra hospitality places are avaliable, so Saints fans might be able to go into the corporate areas if they are willing to fork out a bit extra and prepared to keep their allegiances quite for the day.
The Stadium has a capacity of 24,200, so is heading towards an attendance that although probably wont get to a full house will be about 90% of the way there.
Ironically enough despite there being massive interest here and a big away following, Reading's support is starting to fade after their climb to the premiership and subsequent relegation, so much so that this is likely to be the smallest crowd we have played before at the ground, in February 2006 we went on a Friday night televised game we sold our 2,000 allocation in a 23,845 crowd only a few hundred short of capacity.
In November 2008 we again visited, this time we sold around 3,700 of a 4,000 allocation, who cheered on a win for a very young side that included an on loan Jack Cork, the gate that day was 23,121 again only a few hundred seats empty in the reading sections.
But unless thereis a late rush based on this seasons average of around 16 -17,000 it looks unlikely that Saturday's gate will top either of those two.