Football is a magical game, but sometimes – for some strange reason – we forget, and it takes something special for us to remember.
Islander Michael Le Claire, who tragically passed away in February aged just 45, was, by unanimous agreement, a very special person.
Referred to affectionately as ‘Mikey’ by his large group of close friends, the Islander stood out for his passionate, if unlikely, devotion to Reading F.C.
As a teenager, he’d fallen in love with the club having met a ‘Royals’ super-fan during a few weeks’ work experience at the Pomme d’Or hotel.
It sparked a lifelong relationship, though, for myriad reasons, he’d never actually found the right moment to travel to the UK and watch a game in person.
This remained the case until – after years of encouragement – he took the plunge and bought tickets to his first ever live game at the Select Car Leasing Stadium on Saturday 28 March.
Heartbreakingly, he wasn’t able to make it – but a few friends, none of them Reading F.C. supporters – decided to honour the ticket anyway, and quietly arranged to attend the match in their best mate’s memory.
It was going to be a low-key affair, but the extent of Mikey’s popularity meant that, in no time, the group of attendees quadrupled from 3 to 12.
The twelve mates then made the trip over to Berkshire with the sole intention of celebrating a wonderful life lost far too early.
“We all support different teams”, Mikey’s good friend Graeme Fitchett told the JEP. “But for that day, we were all Reading.”
And, to the group’s surprise, they were greeted at the stadium with the “incredible” news that they’d been upgraded to one of only two private boxes owned by the club.
“What the club did for us was unbelievable”, Graeme confirmed. “They upgraded us to a private box, treated us so well, and then went above and beyond.”
Rishi Somaiya, Hospitality Sales Manager at Reading FC, said he recognised his own life experience in Mikey’s grieving friends.
“To be truthful with you, I’ve also lost friends unexpectedly – I didn’t know the detail of what happened – but I know that the reality of the situation is the same at the end of it; it’s devastating.”
He added: “There’s very little you can do to, kind of, find good moments in those times, from my experience, so what I wanted to try and do at that point was make their day as special as possible.”
After seeing a photograph of Mikey on the big screen before the game; the group were then personally greeted in the executive box by Reading F.C.’s owner Rob Couhig.
“He gave the guys a really nice…I’ll call it a pep talk,” Rishi told me. “He’s obviously been through a lot in his time as well; and you can see the guys, and myself – to be honest – were getting quite emotional about the situation.”
To cap things off, Mr Couhig then presented the group with a Reading shirt, replete with Mikey’s name and a hand-written signature.
For one afternoon, Mr Somaiya said, all financial pressures receded into the background.
He reflected: “Obviously we could have sold the box, we could have charged the shirt – you could do it – but then there’s certain times when it’s not right to do that, and this was one of those times.
“I’m a football fan first, and a salesman second – so if we could find something where you can really leave a long-lasting memory with people, that was the hope”.
With the best will in the world, though, he couldn’t have arranged – or even imagined – what happened next, when Reading scored to double their lead in the 19th minute: Mikey’s lucky number.
“That moment will stay with us forever”, Graeme said.
Phil Godel, who organised the trip, described the day as “really quite a lovely, bizarre, surreal experience.”
He added: “I’m a United fan – I regularly go to matches at Old Trafford – and this easily goes down as the best football experience I’ve ever had.
“It was a lovely thing for them to do, it was great.”
Talking from his office at the Reading F.C. stadium, Mr Somaiya was full of praise for the manner in which the twelve friends conducted themselves.
He said: “I appreciate it was tough, but they carried themselves with real class on the day, I have to say.
“They were amazing: really humble, nice, just good guys – [they] were really classy and dignified throughout the day.
“I couldn’t say a bad word about anybody who came in that group.”
Summing up the trip to Reading, Grame explained: “It wasn’t just football that day, it was compassion, class, and what the game is really about.”
