Thames Valley Royals proposal

Shortly before the end of the 1982–83 Football League season, Robert Maxwell, the then-owner and chairman of Oxford United Football Club, announced that he had made a deal with the owners of nearby Reading to amalgamate the two teams to create a new club he proposed to name "Thames Valley Royals". This appellation combined a loose term for the geographical region, "Thames Valley", with the Reading team's nickname, "the Royals". With each team having financial problems, Maxwell claimed that both were on the verge of going out of business and that uniting them was necessary for the region to retain a Football League club.

Maxwell envisioned Thames Valley Royals' future home as an unspecified location somewhere between Oxford and Reading where a new stadium would be built, perhaps Didcot; home matches would alternate between Oxford and Reading in the meantime. Both sets of supporters promptly embarked on mass demonstrations against the merger, including protest marches and a 2,000-man sit-in on the pitch at Oxford before a match on 23 April. Maxwell pressed on with his plan regardless, insisting that "nothing short of the end of the Earth" would prevent its fruition.

The proposed amalgamation was stopped by the actions of one of Reading's board directors, Roy Tranter, and Roger Smee, a businessman and former Reading player. Smee disputed the legitimacy of the controlling interest in Reading held by the faction of three Reading board members that backed the merger plan, including the chairman Frank Waller, and Tranter launched a legal challenge to the sale of certain shares on 22 April 1983. Waller and his boardroom allies resigned under pressure from the rest of the Reading board on 12 May 1983, and at an extraordinary shareholders' meeting in July, Smee took over the club, ending the amalgamation plans.

During the 1982–83 Football League season, both Oxford United and Reading competed in the Football League Third Division, then the third tier of English football—equivalent to today's League One. Managed by Jim Smith, Oxford challenged for promotion throughout the season, while Maurice Evans' Reading team languished near the relegation zone for much of the year, despite possessing one of the division's top-scoring forwards in Kerry Dixon. The colourful media mogul and former MP Robert Maxwell owned and chaired Oxford, having prevented the club's bankruptcy by buying it in 1982. One of the world's oldest football teams (established in 1871), Reading were a public limited company, chaired by Frank Waller, a prominent local businessman; while owning Oxford, Maxwell also held 19% of Reading's shares. The two clubs share a local rivalry. At the time, both were in financial difficulties, particularly Reading. Maxwell sought to build a new stadium for Oxford United; he had negotiated with the council over potential locations since the time of his takeover, favouring a site in the northern suburb of Marston, but had yet to win council permission to buy the land.

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