Reading marked this years Weeks of Action by featuring the mascot story of young disabled fan Millie and her friend Fern, who were invited to the Madejski Stadium for the Royals home game against Wolves.
Here is their story…
When we first arrived at the Madejski Stadium we were both really excited and looking forward to our mascot experience. We patiently waited for Gill to arrive and for our mascot day to begin. While we were waiting we saw a large group of excited DOS Kampen fans that had travelled to the game to see our manager Jaap Stam.
Then Gill arrived and we were taken up to the Princess Suite where we met the other mascots. We also met Stewart and Jack who were going to look after us for the day. We were given our mascot packages with our autograph books in.
After a short wait we were taken down into the tunnel where we waited for the players to arrive. There was an atmosphere of excitement as one by one the players arrived to sign autographs. For most of the mascots this were the first time meeting the players and our manager, even though we were excited we were familiar faces to the players as we wait to see them every match. The players were happy to sign and glad to see us, and some of them even having a joke with us.
Then we headed back upstairs, and waited patiently to be called down to pitchside for our warm up session. Each mascots was asked what player they would like to walk out with. We went to do our training, and Millie did training pitch side with Stewart. The players were training on the pitch beside us.
Then our moment arrived!!! We were called to line up down in the tunnel and a ramp was put down for Millie. The excitement built as we heard the roar of the crowd. And we headed off onto the pitch with our boys. Millie had chosen Chris Gunter and Fern chose Danny Williams.
We stood proudly in front of our boys and then walked along the line to shake hands with the opposition and Millie carried the match day ball. Then all the mascots had their picture taken with the match officials and our captain Paul McShane. Then we left the pitch for the game to start. It was a great experience for us and we really enjoyed it. To top it off we went out and won 2-1. We must by lucky mascots.
From: Reading FC
(Photos from Official Reading website)
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