SO my first international break column and what can I say?

England were boring, Scotland rubbish, Wales fought hard for two draws, the Republic of Ireland were solid.

On a more positive note, our own Chris Gunter became the fourth most-capped player for Wales.

Apart from that, there was nothing of real interest unless you look at the England U21s – our star midfielder John Swift netted a stunner in a 5-0 victory against Bosnia Herzogovina on Tuesday.

Swift’s confidence will be sky high after some impressive performances for the Royals.

The burning question on Twitter is whether he’ll still be at Reading this time next year?

I certainly hope so because he’s running the show at the moment we’re relying on him to create and score goals.

We head to Loftus Road on Saturday for a hoops derby against Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink’s Queens Park Rangers. It will almost certainly be a fiery encounter as there has been plenty of drama in past meetings.

I remember going to Loftus Road to see Garath McCleary score from 30 yards in a decent win for the Royals as well as another occasion on which QPR fans were physically fighting amongst themselves in the home stands!

Rangers currently sit in 13th, five places and three points behind Reading, having won just one of their last six league games.

Deniss Rakels scored in our 1-1 draw back in April. That result halted our run of four straight defeats last season.

In our previous tie at Loftus Road we won 3-1 with goals from McCleary, Danny Williams and Alex Pearce. We won even with having to play the final 20 minutes of the game with 10 men as Kaspars Gorkks was sent off for a reckless challenge on QPR’s Junior Hoillett, now of Neil Warnock’s Cardiff City.

If we take maximum points on Saturday we could rise as high as fourth in the Championship table with just two weeks until our high-profile clash with Arsenal in the EFL Cup.

I, like many other fans, am incredibly excited for the games ahead thanks to Jaap Stam’s successful style of play so far this season.

We shall see if this continues!