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.       

Photo: Action Images

bstokesaint added 13:58 - Oct 20 On an a selfish note I really hope this is one we win, as I'm surrounded by Reading fans where I live (a lot of new ones I might add!) and would love to see them turned over. On my last 2 trips to Elm Park I saw the Saints lose twice and it was extremely painful, especially in the home end!! We have to be looking at 24 points in the next 11 games if we are to do as well in the second quarter of the season as the first. It's a huge ask, but then look at the teams at the top or rising to the top and we've played a few of them now.

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A1079 added 21:14 - Oct 20 I share your same feelings bstokesaint. If there is one game I want to see us play the opposition off the park it is this one because of the sheer number of Reading fans I know. They have always seemed to get one over us and the needle has been worse than a Pompey defeat. I know whatever happens we stay top and one game does not make a season, it is just the selfish fact of feeling the joy for a change of getting one over them. I live in East Yorkshire now but was brought up in Basingstoke and a friend of mine who used to see Saints switched to being a Reading supporter when they started doing well and we started to decline.

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bstokesaint added 21:27 - Oct 20 It's bad A1079. Basingstoke used to be virtually all Saints and a few of that other smaller south coast team. You never used to see a Reading shirt. These days they're all over the place!! Let's hope we stuff 'em!!
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