York City's first historic visit to Reading's new Madejski Stadium has been called off by another first for the Minstermen.

International call-ups to three Reading players have KO'd tomorrow night's Second Division fixture at the £38 million state of the art stadium.

It's the first time that a City game has ever fallen foul of international duty and it represents an untimely blow to City.

They were pinning their hopes on taking their good form of two successive wins into the clash with the misfiring Royals into tomorrow's eagerly-awaited clash.

Said manager Alan Little: "It's desperately disappointing as the team are playing well and everything was geared up to a big game atmosphere down there tomorrow.

"It's just flattened us all a bit.

"But I can understand why Reading have called it off - that's their prerogative. If I had three players away on international duty I would be doing the same. It's just one of those things."

With City already without a reserves fixture this week efforts were being made to arrange a training clash against another team on Thursday to test the recovery of midfielder Steve Agnew.

The postponement was confirmed today by the Football League to whom Reading boss Tommy Burns had applied for the game to be called off after a third Royals' player was pressed into international selection.

Reading were already without veteran playmaker Ray Houghton, who is in the Republic of Ireland party for the European Championship qualifier against Croatia in Dublin on Saturday, and fellow midfielder Grant Brebner, a member of the Scotland under-21 squad to travel to Lithuania for Friday night's under-21 Euro championship encounter.

Both men played in Reading's 1-0 defeat by Chesterfield on Saturday.

Then a fax message arrived at the Madejski Stadium yesterday informing Reading that another midfielder, 19-year-old Grant Smith, the son of former Brighton star Gordon Smith, had been added to the Scotland under-21 pranks.

Under UEFA rules any team, which has three players called up for international duty, is entitled to have a domestic fixture called off.

But Reading's hat-trick of call-ups is a triple slam for City, who believed tomorrow to be a prime time to tackle their hosts.

Since relegation Reading have blown hot and cold in Division Two, one home win counter-balanced by three jarring away losses.

And with nine players out injured, including ex-York winger Graeme Murty, who is still blighted by an hamstring injury suffered in pre-season after moving to Reading in a record £700,000 summer deal, City harboured prospects of success.

Reading also may have a new £1million striker in action when they finally meet the Minstermen.

After agreeing to sell Carl Asaba to Gillingham today for £600,000 manager Burns was expected to home in on Ipswich Town's highly-rated marksman Alex Mathie.

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