By Jon Keen, STAR
Now that the internationals have again stopped the season just as it had got started, it's a good time to look back at August for STAR.
The highlight of this month for us was undoubtedly our Annual General Meeting and the Fans' Forum that went with it. The AGM is an important part of our year - as an Industrial & Provident Society we are legally required to be open and democratic, and our AGM is one of the ways in which we report back to our members what we have done and are doing.
As well as presenting reports and accounts to our members, we also report upon the completion of our election process, and this year we had a few changes to the Board which runs STAR on a day-to-day basis. As a result of the election process, Michele Law was re-elected whilst Antony James and Wendie Wakefield were elected as new board members - although Antony, who is our webmaster, is not completely new to the Board - as last year he was co-opted.
However, we also had a change of officers. As part of our constitution, no-one can perform the role of Chair for more than five years at a time. This means that Chris Witcher, who has been our Chairman from the formation of STAR in 2002, needed to stand down, with the Board electing Paula Martin as for the forthcoming year.
I'm also honoured to report that I was elected Vice-Chair, which was the role previously occupied by Paula. At the time of writing, Chris is still suffering withdrawal symptoms and still coming to terms with not being able to have the last word!
Luckily for everyone, these administrative matters are always handled at breakneck speed and so we were quickly able to move onto the enjoyable business of the evening - the Fans' Forum.
With around 200 fans in attendance, we welcomed Kevin Dillon and Wally Downes to the top tables for the Q&A - two new faces to our regular Fans' Forums. And it turned out to be a very enjoyable and enlightening evening, with Kevin and Wally answering fans' questions very openly and honestly - and probably revealing more at times than Steve Coppell would have wanted them to!
These Forums are always great fun and very informal, and we're very grateful to all the guests from the Football Club, who always seem to enter into the spirit of the evening in a big way.
Our coverage
Apart from the AGM, there were the usual round of journalists' questions and interviews we always get at the start of the season, although the number of these we do is much, much, greater in the Premier League than it used to be in the lower divisions.
And if we're over-worked with the relatively few we're asked to do, I dread to think what it must be like for the players and management, who must be inundated and completely fed-up with having to answer the same questions again and again.
One I did enjoy, though, was being asked to sit on BBC Radio Berkshire's pre-season Fans' Panel, alongside Simon Cox and a number of other Royals Fans - nearly all of whom were female, which was an added bonus!
Then, sadly, I had to miss the opening match of the season at Old Trafford, as I had an FSF National Council meeting in Cardiff on the Sunday - Thanks, Sky TV, for rescheduling this match! However, also in the meeting was the Chair of the Independent Manchester United Supporters' Association, and so at least both sides were one fan down that afternoon.
I was also lucky enough this month to go to Wembley to watch the England v Germany friendly, and so experienced something that only a few years ago would have seemed fanciful - sitting in a completed Wembley Stadium, watching a Reading player line up for England in a full international. I kept thinking that I'd wake up from the dream and suddenly find myself standing, ran-sodden, under a hole in the roof at Elm Park!
Reading 'Til I Die
STAR announced another major project this month - the production of a book recording the memories and experiences of Reading fans through the years. This book is provisionally entitled "Reading 'Til I Die", and in it we want to document the recollections and experiences of fans young and old.
Players and managers may come and go, but it's the fans who, through the years, give a permanent character and a sense of continuity to our club, and so this book will be a celebration of the funny, the absurd, the peculiar and unbelievable that is part and parcel of following Reading.
We think it's tremendously important that memories like this are recorded for future generations, especially as the proportion of our fan-base who remember Elm Park and the days of shuttling around the lower divisions, visiting places like Hartlepool, Rochdale, Halifax and Workington, is getting ever-smaller.
So we think this is a vital part of recording the history of our club and our supporters, and so we're all very excited about organising this project. This book will be available in time for Christmas, so put it on your Christmas list now! And if you want to contribute your memories for possible inclusion in "Reading 'Til I Die", see www.star-reading.org for full details of how to do this - but we do need all contributions to be made by the end of September.
Fans United
The last major thing I have been involved in this month is supporting the Football Supporters' Federation's "Fans United" day at Wycombe Wanderers. This involved fans from many different clubs joining together to show their support for a specific fans' cause.
In this case, it was the right to choose to stand at football matches, in properly designed "Safe Standing" areas. This whole day was very well-supported, with fans from over 30 different clubs, all in team colours, peacefully mingling together on a terrace behind the goal at Adams Park.
The banter on days like these is always great, with fans who'd ordinarily not get on putting all the differences aside for a common cause, and chatting happily together - at one stage we even had Southampton and Portsmouth fans hugging and posing for photos together!
All in all, a very enjoyable event and if anyone ever gets a chance to go to a "Fans United" match I'd definitely recommend they take it - they're always great fun, and it's occasions like this one that reassure me that the common stereotype of the football supporters is way off the mark.
