Playing a derby and holding an Armistice ceremony on the same night was always going to be a tonal challenge. Derbies celebrate division, the Armistice warns against its corrosive reality. Derbies are loud and aggressive, Armistice is silent and solemn. Shifting from one to the other is not a smooth and natural transition.

Then there’s this thing we call the Thames Valley derby, it’s not as whole and complete as the one we share with Swindon. It’s frayed and fragmented, intensely felt by some, vague ephemera to others. After years of enmity, at the turn of the century we drifted into different orbits and the furnaces of the feud were extinguished. There’s been little to reignite the fires since.

Arriving at the stadium, it looked like Thames Valley Police were stuck in 1983. The place was flooded with officers glowing in hi-vis, outnumbering the usual throng of bewildered misfits that choose to watch Wednesday night League One football. Police vans filled the car park while columns of stewards marched fans from the Grenoble Road to the North Stand. At one point, a garrison of officers on mountain bikes wobbled through the throng in formation, their headlights twinkling like a string of Christmas fairy lights. It was TVP’s equivalent of a North Korean military parade.

They may report that the operation was successful because there was no trouble, and maybe they were marshalling an army of savages driven mad by the fumes of industrial strength glue and armed to the teeth with machetes and claw hammers. It didn’t look like it.

The modern day rivalry is like the divorced couple that have moved beyond hatred and venom. The rancour grumbles on, but there are kids’ swimming lessons to think about and ageing parents to look after. Reading and Oxford have been too busy getting on with life to really hate each other.

Neither club thinks they’re where it should be; we’re no longer two homely sides engaging in a local skirmish. Reading’s move to the Madejski was an attempt to remodel them for the Premier League, we’ve been in a generational holding pattern at The Kassam waiting for some kind of recovery plan to materialise. Meetings between the two clubs have been glancing blow on our way to somewhere else. Maybe we need a few years irritating each other for the relationship to shift.

But, this is where we are. The Remembrance ceremony earnestly trod the line between respect and over-indulgence. A display in the East Stand, a bugler straining his way through the Last Post, the barking of the last refrain of Binyon’s “For the Fallen” with nervous urgency. The crowd’s silence was made more poignant by the thought that Dusan Bogdanovich has managed to maintain his for a full three months.

The tension broken, the tonal swarm shifted as the players gathered in front of the East Stand. It should have been an opportunity to rattle the rafters but the crowd shifted too slowly and the moment misfired. The players broke from their huddle to little more than a murmur.

Reading shaded the opening stages looking bright and sharp on the ball. The movement exercised our rearguard, stretching it in parts. We absorbed what we could and survived where we needed to. Emakhu fluffed a chance before Simon Eastwood denied Jack Marriott.

Despite the moments, at times, the game almost reached a standstill. “Play football!” bellowed someone behind me as we ponderously worked the ball along the back line taking the sting from the game. It was like a plea from a lost age when shin kicking and the shoulder barge were the height of sophistication.

Aaron Ramsey’s masterplan reveals more each game, the ability to absorb the enthusiasm and burn the energy of your opponents early in the game feels deliberate. Catapulting pace down the wings through Emakhu and Dembele dislodges stability. Goals are not the goal, Emakhu’s profligacy is often criticised, but his accelerations leave lasting damage to be exploited later in the game.

As the game progressed, the visitors pushed as we absorbed. In moments, they spiked; a Keystone Cops scramble was a narrow escape before Ciaron Brown sliced a clearance off the bar.

Paradoxically the more we beckoned them on, the more we gained the upper hand. We attacked calmly and deliberately, back to front, a steady progression with each attack, starting from an increasingly advanced position. First from the edge of our box, then from the centre circle, until finally we were camping on the edge of their box.

Our calm domination wrestled momentum from their grip. On the hour, Ramsey chose to strike; Emakhu for Missanga and Goodrham for O’Donkor. The trap was sprung.

The framework Ramsey had constructed in plain site was finally revealed with twenty minutes to go. Cameron Brannagan stood over the ball, eyeing up another shot at goal. Reading paused, and in that distracted moment, Brannagan slid the ball to O’Donkor who turned and shot across Pereira’s goal and into the net.

Seven minutes later, Brannagan’s deep looping cross was nodded back by O’Donkor and Missanga flicked the loose ball in. A dancing ball of catharsis and energy, he headed towards the East Stand, standing on the advertising boards to receive the fans’ embrace. As clever and subtle as his finish was, the statement it made was loud and brash. Rejected by Reading as teenagers, O’Donkor could be evolving into a next generation Sam Long, Missanga is a beacon of hope; brave and naive, wide-eyed and clear headed, the shoots of a new era peaking through the soil.

All there was to do was drive home the humiliation, Reading fans slipped away quietly as we worked the ball around the pitch without challenge. The whistle went, air punches were despatched and we headed into the night.

The Swindon derby bursts into life fully formed, a jolting surprise for those who haven’t seen it in full flight. The meaning of this win came from within, Brannagan had his statement derby win, O’Donkor and Missanga got their revenge and Aaron Ramsey cemented his growing reputation; as we leave a period of intense pressure, we enter a new phase with optimism.