This weekend sees the Berkshire club begin their busy schedule when they make the long journey to Leeds on Saturday for a league game before returning to Reading to play the Taunton Tigers in the Quarter-Final of the National Trophy on Sunday.

Reading Rockets will hope they can finally play a competitive game in 2010 having seen both their games since the Christmas break postponed due to the adverse weather conditions. Rockets were due to play the London Leopards last Saturday in their first league game of the year - however the London team were unable to travel to Reading to play as was the case on Wednesday when Rockets were due to play BBL champions, the Newcastle Eagles in the BBL Trophy.

Rockets now face fixture congestion going into the final months of the regular season as they still have to play 16 league games, and at least one game in the National Trophy and BBL Trophy respectively before the beginning of April. This weekend sees the Berkshire club begin their busy schedule when they make the long journey to Leeds on Saturday for a league game before returning to Reading to play the Taunton Tigers in the Quarter-Final of the National Trophy on Sunday.

The good news for the Rockets is that they have managed a full week of practice, and with no injury worries Coach Sasa Punosevac and his team are fired up and looking forward to hopefully playing their first competitive game of the year this weekend. In speaking about his concern about the amount of upcoming games the Rockets have, Coach Punosevac was upbeat on his side’s chances this weekend. He said, ‘Both games are very important to us this weekend especially Sunday’s Quarter-Final game against Taunton. We will be going into the game fresh and having had a good week of practice although we will be lacking some game sharpness. The problem we have at the moment is the amount of games we have to play between now and April and we are all going to have to do a really good job in getting the schedule right for the team.’

The Rockets match-up against Leeds Carnegie on Saturday and this will be only the second meeting between the two teams in both club’s history. The two teams met last season in the National Cup Semi-Final which saw the Division 2 outfit reach that stage of the competition for the first time. However it was the Division 1 champions, the Rockets, who were to win the game by 88 points to 76 and eventually win the competition on their way to the perfect 36-0 season. Leeds is currently joint second in Division 1 and Rockets Team Analyst knows it is going to be a tough game. He said, ‘Leeds is a well coached team who have worked their way through the ranks up to the top division of English Basketball. This year they have some excellent talent in American’s Adrian Fenyn and Mike Medved, coupled with some really good young English players in Ladi Brown and Albert Margai. We will have to do a really good job on all these guys, especially Fenyn who is leading the league in scoring and has the ability to change any game. Despite their result against Derby in the last game they are a force to be reckoned with so we will need to bring our ‘a’ game to get the victory.’

Sunday sees the Rockets return home to defend their National Trophy title which they have won on the last three occasions. Taunton Tigers will be the visitors to Rivermead who they play for the second time this season in the Quarter-Final clash. Despite the disruptions of practices and games, Rockets Assistant Coach Matt Johnson believes his side can take heart from the previous game against Taunton before Christmas and the rest the team have had going into the weekend. He said, ‘The game against Taunton at the end of November was a real turning point for this team. We played some really good basketball and started to find the strengths of this unit. Even since our 20 point win at their place we are much improved so we can be confident going into Sunday’s game.'

Rockets tip-off against Leeds on Saturday at 4pm at Leeds Metropolitan University and against Taunton on Sunday at 4pm at Rivermead. All adults and families attending Sunday’s game will receive a free programme to make up for the disappointment of Rockets' previous two games being postponed.