Happy Baggie convoy to Reading

Albion blogger Jarrod Hill enjoyed his part in the travelling convoy headed to the Madjeski Stadium as the Baggies took another step toward promotion at Reading.

Saturday's trip to Reading turned out to be a minor feat in organisation for us Albion fans, who 40 forty coaches laid on free of charge by the club.

It has become a regular occurrence each season, as the club aims to thank the fans for our support throughout the year. We were on the same coach as Cyril Randle and his nephew. Now Cyril is best described as being the West Midlands' answer to Hugh Heffner, so I literally had to beat away the bikini clad girls just to say hello to him!

A point earned on the road kept most of us happy, although referee Andy D'Urso was shocking enough to raise our collective blood pressure to a dangerous level, with Pete 'Hilltop Baggie' Danckert blowing his top alongside me on more than one occasion.

The draw was a fair result, we had the majority of possession but Reading had more clear cut goalscoring opportunities. The fact we earned a draw away from home against one of the in-form teams is in no small measure thanks to our goalkeeper and club captain Scott Carson.

Carson was simply superb, even the one that Reading managed to get past him came after he had already pulled off a brilliant save before it was tapped in from a second clearance off the line.

Young Scott has had mixed fortunes this season and is quickly becoming the fans' marmite of our squad, but love him or hate him I still believe he has earned us more points this season than he has cost us.

Saturday's result has become even more enjoyable after Nottingham Forest lost last night at Newcastle. The gap between us and Forest in third position is now nine points with six games remaining.

It's starting to feel a bit like Christmas Eve when I was seven years old, but this time I am dreaming of Premier League football and not a Star Wars x-wing fighter!

Sir Terry Baggie had us chuckling as normal at Reading, with his Tony Mowbray mask that had 'giz a job' written all over it! He was also dressed as a steward in a tongue-in-cheek bit of fun referring to our home game against Saturday's opponents a few weeks ago.

But the home stewards didn't see the funny side and made any fans dressed in high vis jackets remove them before entering the stadium. They all looked like they had been enjoying free food rations laid on by the club, and the only time you would see more fat men in suits would be at a dart player's funeral.

Onto this Friday's home game against Leicester City. Let's all hope we have some of our walking wounded back in time for the game. Chris Brunt, Robert Koren, Marek Cech and Roman Bednar were all missing Saturday and it is testament to the depth of our squad that young Chris Wood can come in and do a decent job up front on his own.

Jerome Thomas looked to be getting over his own injury problems and was a constant threat to the Reading defence, with Joe Mattock behind him shackling the impressive Jimmy Kebe.

Leicester will be fired up for this Friday's game as they chase a play off spot and as we all know there are no easy games in the Championship. But if we can maintain our unbeaten run we will take another step towards promotion.

The strange thing is, as much as I want us to hurry up and secure our passage into the greed league, I also don't want this season to end.

My only consolation is that at least I have a World Cup this summer to feed my thirst for football, where there will be Albion players to watch.

I am feeling happy, I hope you are too.