King Charles overthrows the Royals

Darius says Boro learnt from previous year’s mistakes to beat Reading in FA Cup

Darius Charles says Stevenage always thought they could win at Reading after learning lessons following last year’s FA Cup exit to the same opponents.

Charles scored in the 2-1 defeat in last season’s Fourth Round, but this time around scored a first-half winner to knock the Royals out at the Third Round stage.

“We looked at the game last year. We were disappointed with the way we played in that game and we prepared right for this game and made sure that we weren’t going to have the same result as last year,” said Charles.

“We always learn from our mistakes and we will continue to progress, and we felt that we had a better chance this year through the learning that we had done to possibly get the win.”

Charles scored the game’s only goal on 21 minutes - a deflected 20-yard strike - in front of an empty North Stand at the Madejski Stadium, and said he was pleased to be bombarded by team-mates so he had people to celebrate with.

“It took a touch, but it was going in anyway,” Charles told The Comet.

“It was excellent work from Scott Laird to take the ball off them, to play the ball into me and luckily enough it went into the back of the net.

“I looked up and thought ‘um, there’s no-one to cheer with here’, but the boys came in and celebrated with me. I was bombarded by them so it was excellent.”