Madejski Stadium

Sunday, 17 April 2011

Reading 3-1 Leicester City

Aerial shot of the Madejski Stadium (Bing Maps)

Programme - £3.00

Ratings

Overall Ground Quality : 8/10

Ease of getting there : 7/10

Atmosphere : 7/10

Programme : 8/10

View of Action : 8/10

Quality of the game : 7/10

The "football" feeling : 5/10

Chances of coming here for a random game : 3/10

Legroom : 10/10

Surrounding area : 6/10

Overall : 69/100

The South Stand (Away)

The Madejski Hotel and The West Stand

Club Megastore and Reception

The North Stand

The East Stand

The West Stand

The North Stand

The East Stand

The North Stand

The East Stand

The West Stand

Another travelling supporter in the Away end

Reading 3-1 Leicester City We set off at 8:45am and went down the M1 and went through Milton Keynes before reaching our first stop of the day, Aylesbury who play at Haywood Park. Aylesbury are nicknamed ‘the Moles’ due to previous problems with the amount of Moles that lived underneath the pitch at Haywood Park. We continued our journey towards Reading. Our next stop was Adams Park which is home to Wycombe Wanderers. Adams Park is named after former captain Frank Adams, not the underachieved Tony Adams who managed Wycombe in 2003/04. Situated at Adams Park are the original gates from their previous home, Loakes Park. Currently London Wasps who ground share with Wycombe could see themselves both move away from Adams Park for a bigger ground for the egg-chasin..sorry Rugby, we can only assume that they want to compete with London Irish who play at the 20,000+ seater stadium instead of at the equally as nice Adams Park with a capacity of 10,284. Our final stop was Marlow who play at the Alfred Davis Memorial Ground which holds 3,000. Marlow competed in the first ever FA Cup in 1871 and reached the FA Cup Semi Final in 1882. We arrived in Reading at 1pm and parked on Spencer Road which at the time of our visit didn't feature residential parking permits and was a 20 minute walk from the ground. We had lunch at McDonalds on Reading Gate Retail Park which is situated behind the Madejski Stadium. We then walked towards the stadium and took photos of the exterior before going in.

Wikipedia states that the Madejski Stadium ‘is an all-seater bowl stadium with a capacity of 24,161 and is located close to the M4 motorway. It was built on the site of a former household waste dump and the stadium is surrounded by methane vents. The stadium cost more than £50m to build and the pitch incorporates a system of synthetic fibres interwoven with natural grass, installed at a cost of more than £750,000.’

‘It was opened on 22 August 1998 when Luton Town were beaten 3–0 with Grant Brebner having the honour of scoring the first goal at the stadium. It was officially opened on 10 September 1998 by Birgitte, the Duchess of Gloucester.’

‘For the first time in their history, Reading Football Club participated in the Premier League in the 2006–07 season. As a result of the sell-out crowds for their first few fixtures of the season, the club announced their intention, in October 2006, to make a planning application to extend the ground to between 37,000 to 38,000 seats. The application was made on 24 January 2007, proposing initially the extension of the East Stand with a further 6,000 seats (raising capacity to around 30,000) and subsequently extension of the North and South Stands to reach the full proposed capacity. On Thursday 24 May 2007 it was announced that planning permission had been granted to extend the stadium to a capacity of 36,900. The first phase will expand the East Stand by 6,600 seats. Work was set to start in mid 2008, after the initial plan of extending in 2007 was scrapped due to spectator seats being affected, during the work, already being sold to season ticket holders. Reading's relegation from the Premier League in 2008 meant that all expansion plans were put on hold and are unlikely to resurface at least until promotion back to the Premier League is achieved.’

The game saw Leicester’s play off dream almost come to an end after being thumped by an in form Reading team who are currently in the play off position who could even go all the way for an automatic promotion. Goals by Jimmy Kebe, Jobi McAnuff, Noel Hunt and a consolation by City's Andy King saw the game end at 3-1.

Overall we enjoyed our visit to the Madejski Stadium which is by far one of the best grounds in the Championship. Unfortunately we couldn't say the same about Leicester City's performance after being thrashed by a high flying Reading team.