IT’S been a good week for all-rounders Dan Lincoln and Sukhi Kang both with the bat and ball – that’s cricket and football.

Former Reading FC goalkeeper Lincoln saved a penalty as Bognor Regis Town won 4-0 at AFC Sudbury to keep them top of the Ryman League with three games remaining.

Then on Sunday, he scored a century when the Berkshire county cricket team held a friendly match between themselves at Henley.

Lincoln was voted the Ryman League’s best goalkeeper for the month of March, while team manager Jamie Howell earned the manager’s award.

“I got a pair of gloves, but he got a suit,”said Lincoln.

Wearing his wicket-keeper gloves, Kang, took two catches and scored 24 runs in that Berkshire match and then on Monday he was in the Woodley United squad that defeated Chinnor 3-0 to seal promotion from Division One East of the Hellenic League.

  • DAVID Downs, Reading FC’s child safeguarding officer, is carrying out similar duties this week at the schools soccer festival in Jersey.

He has attended the annual event more than 40 times, many of them when assisting a Reading Primary Schools representative side.

Sadly, there is no longer a team. In fact, the good old days of Reading schools rep teams appear to be over due, I understand, due to a lack of teaching staff prepared to organise teams and arrange games. It also applies to senior school football.

The Reading association reached a peak in 2005 when winning the English Schools FA Under-15 title in 2005 by defeating Sefton, but since then there has been little to note.

Reading may be absent, but the Wokingham and Newbury districts were among the 18 entries for this week’s event in Jersey.

  • WHY haven’t Reading FC offered a refund to their hundreds of fans who travelled to Norwich last Saturday and endured one of the most abject displays seen from a Royals team for a very long time?

They did improve in the second half, so even a 50-per-cent reduction on the cost of a future away game would probably be agreeable with supporters.