Tim Dellor: Focusing on the fun is self-preservation

WHAT makes a welcoming club? A parking spot right outside the main entrance immediately lifts my mood.

Exceedingly good cakes delivered to my seat before kick-off and at half-time is a good start. A raucous atmosphere throughout the game, generated by friendly locals, is important, as is some silly half-time entertainment, preferably involving a couple of half-cut fans wearing those huge inflatable zorb bubble balls which ruin any remaining co-ordination.

Players who seem to give their all in the name of entertainment definitely helps.

Cambridge United at The Abbey Stadium offered all this and more. It was a fabulous night out.

On the face of it the ground is a bit ramshackle and low budget, there were fewer than 7,000 there, but it was full to capacity, and most of their players are more suited to League Two than One, but none of that mattered a jot.

For the 1,100 Reading fans who had made the journey, conceding a late goal to lose the game 1-0 was a bit of a dampener, but we can gloss over that.

It was an evening that proved however low the league, however poor the standard of football, and however small the stadium, it’s still possible to enjoy an entertaining bit of old-fashioned sport.

The game didn’t warrant a mention in any national newspaper the next day, although bizarrely the Sky TV cameras were there.

I would like to have been in the TV planning meeting at Sky HQ when some bright spark came up with the idea what people really wanted to watch on a sunny Monday evening in early September was Cambridge v Reading in League One.

While I was having a terrific evening out at The Abbey Stadium, I am not sure how well the delights would have transmitted across the airwaves.

The Abbey Stadium even served up a spectacular late summer sunset a couple of minutes before kick-off, as the great fireball plunged behind the far stand, leaving a sensational orange and purple sky.

This is a stadium that seemed to have everything.

This whole week feels like a long goodbye to summer. The first full week in September always does.

Children returning to school, exhausted parents returning to work, a new Strictly series about to start on the telly, leaves starting to fall, getting dark soon after 8 o’clock.

It might be 30 degrees for the first time all year, but you can just sense autumn everywhere.

Reading don’t play again until Saturday, September 16, when they will host Bolton at the SCL.

The break is good news for everyone who cares about the club, because frankly following the team has not been good for you in 2023.

They have now played 15 away league games and they haven’t won any of them.

They have only managed a couple of draws in that sequence of games, and if like me you have driven to all 15 games since the last win back on November 12, you deserve a rest.

That’s why I spend more time focusing on cakes, car-parking, sunsets and half-time entertainment now. It’s a form of self-preservation.