READING University has suspended their men's hockey section following reports of bad behaviour off the field involving players, especially around Christmas time.

Five teams have had to cancel midweek and Saturday fixtures.

And that has led to Reading University Knights 5ths being forced to withdraw from Division Four of the Middx, Berks, Bucks & Oxon League with less than half of their fixtures completed.

They were unable to play in January and early this month, but the league were willing to reschedule the games for March.

However, that will not now happen as the league have expunged the University's results and published a revised table.

It came at a time when Reading were looking capable of mounting a bid for promotion, as only two sides managed to take points off them in the first half of the season.

A league official confirmed the misbehaviour of the players had nothing to do with their hockey.

Among the teams to have benefitted from the Knights' withdrawal are Reading 5ths, who are lying third in the standings, 10 points behind leaders Oxford University 4ths with two games in hand.

HAPPIER news from the University of Reading was the recent 50th-year reunion of their football team which reached the semi-finals of the UAU Championship before losing 1-0 to Loughborough Colleges under floodlights at Elm Park.

Eleven members of the 1968-69 squad travelled from all over the place to meet up again in Reading and reminisce about the good old days before going on to watch Reading play Aston Villa at Madejski Stadium.

Their game against Loughborough also brought back memories for Reading football historian David Downs, who was among the crowd of 750 and still possesses the match programme.

BOBBY Malik, who was player-coach at Reading Cricket Club before switching to Falkland CC, is returning to Reading to coach young players.

Through his Pure Cricket company, he will be holding coaching sessions for the Under 9s up to U15s at Blue Coat School, starting a week on Saturday, February 23 (7pm) and running through to March 30.