Record Breakers

Every season, a handful teams in every division start off strong.

A win to start the season is a great way to kick off a new campaign.  Back-to-back wins helps to settle everyone's nerves.  Three on the spin is dreamland.

But no club, before or since, has achieved what Reading did at the start of the 1985/86 campaign... 13 consecutive league wins to begin the Division 3 season!

It was a team that had a bit of knowhow and could find a way to win.  And there was no harm in having Trevor Senior in the side, who would become our all-time leading goalscorer, and being captained by Martin Hicks, who went on to become all-time leading appearance-maker!

Under the stewardship of Ian Branfoot, the Royals earned promotion as champions that season and claimed a place in English football's second tier for the 1986/87 season - the first time since 1931 that Reading had been at that level.

Those opening 13 games were tightly-contested matches but each opponent succumbed to our side.  Blackpool (1-0), Plymouth (1-0), Bristol Rovers (3-2), Cardiff (3-1), Walsall (2-1), Rotherham (2-1), Brentford (2-1), Swansea (2-0), Doncaster (1-0), Chesterfield (4-2), Bolton (1-0), Newport (2-0) and Lincoln (1-0) - all were defeated.

Wolverhampton Wanderers, in our 14th league outing, were the first to come away with something to show for their efforts; they left Elm Park with a 2-2 draw and a share of the points on October 23rd.

At the start of every season since, we have watched carefully to see how long the other clubs can keep up a winning-streak... week on week, more clubs fall at a hurdle until none are left standing.  No-one has ever matched our achievement.

No club in the Football League has gone as long in competitive action without conceding a goal as Reading - goalkeeper Steve Death and his teammates kept out opposition players for 1,103 minutes of action across the course of two seasons in 1979.

Reading had been well-placed in the Easter period of the 1978/79 and were searching for promotion back to Division 3 at the second attempt.

But, after six wins and a draw from seven games across February and March, they hit a bit of a sticky patch and picked up just a single point from the next three games.

On March 24th, a sixth-minute goal at Spotland was all that was needed for the Lancashire club to take the points on that afternoon... but little did we know that that would be the last time Steve Death would take a visit to the back of his net in league action for almost five months!

11 more games followed that season, against Grimsby (4-0), Port Vale (0-0), Crewe (2-0), Portsmouth (2-0), Bournemouth (0-0), Aldershot (4-0), Hartlepool (0-0), Darlington (1-0), Halifax (1-0), Wimbledon (1-0), Port Vale (3-0).  While Steve Death picks up most of the plaudits, the whole team contributed to an incredible effort which resulted in lifting the Division 4 title in May.

The question was: how long would that run go on for?

The answer came on the opening day of the 1979/80 league season... the Royals were finally breached just before the half-hour mark in what would eventually be a 2-2 draw against Brentford at Elm Park.  1,103 minutes had officially been counted since Royals supporters had seen their team concede in the Football Club... at the time, no professional club in the country could say the same.

In 2009, Manchester United's Edwin van der Sar helped Manchester United to surpass that figure in the Premier League.

But in the Football League, our long-standing record goes on!