It is the time of the season when awards are handed out to players who have entertained and enthralled over the course of nine gruelling months, yet few outside Reading would have marked down Marcus Hahnemann for a national gong. After all, the United States goalkeeper has been partly responsible for the second worst defensive away record in the Barclays Premier League.

Yet Hahnemann could end the campaign with an accolade after making a late entry at the JJB Stadium for the Comedy Moment of the Season award. Having helped his team to secure a priceless point in the battle to avoid the drop, Hahnemann was upset to discover that there was no hot water for the showers. Wrongly assuming that Wigan officials had turned off the hot water supply to the visiting team’s dressing-room, he stormed into the corridor wearing nothing but a towel and turned the air blue as Emile Heskey, the Wigan forward, was talking to the media near by.

Heskey broke off his interview to tell Hahnemann to calm down, at which point Steve Bruce, the Wigan manager, also became embroiled in the argument, along with Michael Duberry, the Reading defender. Bruce and Heskey urged Hahnemann to tone down his language and stop being rude before all parties disappeared back into their respective dressing-rooms. It later emerged that there was a fault with the hot water system and that both sets of players had to have cold showers or none at all. Yet Hahnemann’s tantrum at least provided more excitement than anything both sets of players had served up on the pitch.

In a high-stakes match, it was perhaps understandable that neither team dared to put a foot wrong. Defeat for Wigan would have dragged them back into the relegation mix, while Reading would have been in even more serious trouble had they not ended a run of three defeats.

As it is, Wigan, regardless of their result away to Aston Villa on Saturday, will be safe if Birmingham fail to win at Fulham, while Reading’s fate will not be decided until after their final match away to Derby County.

Steve Coppell, the Reading manager, could take heart from a workmanlike performance with no one working harder than Kevin Doyle. He had insisted on playing despite being told that a cousin, her husband and their two children had died earlier in the day in a house fire in Co Wexford. “Kevin was obviously upset but in a way playing the game took his mind off it,” Coppell said. “His family wanted to keep it from him until after the game. but I thought he should know. He then spoke to them and decided, very bravely, to play. In the circumstances he was terrific.”

Wigan Athletic (4-4-2): C Kirkland 6 – M Melchiot 5 (sub: R Taylor, 26min 6), E Boyce 6, P Scharner 6, K Kilbane 6 – L A Valencia 7, M Brown 8, W Palacios 7, J Koumas 6 – E Heskey 6 (sub: M King, 73 ), M Bent 5 (sub: A Sibierski, 64 5).Substitutes not used: M Pollitt, J Skoko. Booked: Kilbane, Taylor Next: Aston Villa (a).

Reading (4-4-2): M Hahnemann 6 – L Rosenior 6, I Ingimarsson 7, M Duberry 7, N Shorey 6 – K Doyle 7 (sub: G Little, 69 5), J Harper 6, A Bikey 7, S Hunt 6 – L Lita 6 (sub: S Long, 85), D Kitson 5. Substitutes not used: A Federici, K Cissé, M Matejovsky. Booked: Bikey, Duberry, Hunt, Shorey. Next: Tottenham Hospur (h).