Just before half-time, the cheers from the travelling Chelsea fans took a conspicuous turn, moving across the sliding scale from confident battle cry to unshackled revelry.
Now, they were wolfish, elatedly so. So yes, they implored left-back Niamh Charles to indulge in a shot from range and jeered with as much jest feasible as Reading pushed forward in hunt of a goal that simply was not going to come.
Few could blame them, however technically premature their celebrations might have been. The sun was shining and so were Chelsea's stars, Sam Kerr and Guro Reiten firing the reigning champions into a 2-0 lead before the half, an eventual 3-0 victory courtesy once more of Kerr.
