{"id":799,"date":"2025-10-15T04:38:07","date_gmt":"2025-10-15T04:38:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/799\/"},"modified":"2025-10-15T04:38:07","modified_gmt":"2025-10-15T04:38:07","slug":"we-are-getting-closer-noel-hunt-on-reading-fcs-exeter-city-draw","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/799\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018We Are Getting Closer\u2019: Noel Hunt On Reading FC\u2019s Exeter City Draw"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">The Royals find themselves back in the relegation zone after a 1-1 draw against Exeter City at St James Park on Saturday.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">The Royals took the lead through Jack Marriott in the sixth minute, Marriott scoring his sixth goal in consecutive matches. Former Reading striker Jayden Wareham netted minutes later to equalise.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">With the draw, Reading find themselves back in the relegation zone. With pressure mounting on Noel Hunt, a win was needed to move us away from the drop zone. Here is what Hunt had to say, he spoke to the official club website.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">\u201dI thought we were a little bit better than last week in terms of structure &#8211; in the second half especially. We had enough chances to win the game; we had two or three big chances in the second half. We finish with another draw.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">\u201dThe boys are a bit down and they are disappointed they haven\u2019t won the last two games. Rightly so, that\u2019s the way we need to be. Off the back of that, it\u2019s one defeat in eight. We are getting closer, we created three or four really good chances today, especially in the second half.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">\u201cWe looked a bit more solid at the back, it\u2019s just cutting out the mistakes in terms of young Ashqar [Ahmed], he has to hook that away early, and Matty [Jacob] just defend and don\u2019t be too clever with it. We got caught and it cost us a goal. These young boys have to learn quickly, sometimes it is important that we don\u2019t give teams a leg up.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Hunt on Paudie O\u2019Connor<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">\u201dHe has done enough training, but we needed to get him out. We contemplated starting him or bringing him off the bench, but we have to throw him in and see how long he lasts.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">\u201cHe\u2019s a warrior, I thought he was great today. From being out and not playing in eight or nine weeks, to come back and have a competitive game, it took him three or four minutes to get going but then he was fine.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">\u201cWe are getting boys back to fitness. We didn\u2019t want to burn the candle at both ends with Matty [Ritchie], so we took him off to make sure he is OK. He wanted to stay out there no doubt, but I think it was a wise decision.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">\u201cHe picked something up in training during the week so we will assess him and hopefully he is okay. He took a sore one on Thursday so hopefully he\u2019s fine. We will give the boys the day off tomorrow and go again on Monday &#8211; fingers crossed he\u2019s okay.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Royals find themselves back in the relegation zone after a 1-1 draw against Exeter City at St&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":800,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[968,128,130,129,969],"class_list":["post-799","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-reading","tag-manager-quotes","tag-reading-city","tag-reading-city-headlines","tag-reading-city-news","tag-reading-fc-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/799","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=799"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/799\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/800"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=799"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=799"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=799"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}