Yes, I know it’s a very obvious title, using The Skids’ 1979 top ten hit for a game played at The Valley, and when the home team use it as a theme song (along with Dunfermline Athletic where The Skids came from). I was thinking about using something from The Who, in reference to their concert at The Valley back in 1976 which is in the Guinness Book of Records as being the loudest rock concert ever; but I’ve already used a Who song this season, and I vowed to myself not to use more than one song title per artist across the season. Mainly to prevent myself from using thirty Jam songs. I could have used a more oblique reference and had a Big Country song (“Wonderland” or “Look Away” depending on the result) instead, as a nod to Stuart Adamson, co-writer of “Into The Valley”, who left The Skids to form Big Country. But instead, I’ve gone for the lowest common denominator and obvious choice. And I noticed a bit later than I should what the name of the Charlton manager is. That would have been an even lower common denominator song title to use, or perhaps I could have gone for something else from The Supremes.
The Valley is a lot bigger than the Broadfield, but back in the day it used to be mahoosive, and they managed a crowd of over 75,000 back in the 1930s for a FA Cup tie, one of only eight clubs to get over the 75k mark for a domestic game at their home ground. Although it was nearly lost completely under a disastrous spell in the 1980s which saw Charlton ground sharing with Crystal Palace and West Ham before it was reopened in 1992.
Oh yes, today’s opponents are Charlton Athletic, another of the contingent of former Premier League clubs we line up to play this season.
Although not being in the top flight in the seventies, there were one or two players picked up in the Topps cards each year during the period. There were two from my favourite 1976 set, Colin Powell, and Mike Flanagan. The latter being best known for being sent off, along with teammate Derek Hales, for fighting each other, in a 1979 FA Cup tie against Maidstone.
This is our first league outing against them, but we have met four times in the various guises of the Football League Trophy, winning two and losing two, and it being one win and one (pretty heavy) loss at the Valley.
We go into the game eight places behind Charlton, but only six points, with them in indifferent form in the league, but probably buoyed by an easy 4-0 win away from home in the FA Cup on Saturday. We had a different outcome ourselves, but we are down to absolute bare bones with injuries, and for tonight’s game, suspensions, and if people leaving their mics on whilst doing commentary are to be believed, discipline issues, but whoever is out on the pitch they are giving it their all; regardless of what some absolute Clangers are spouting on the forums.
The Clangers moan about our manager, and Rob Elliot is returning to the club he supported as a child, and whom he played for between 2004 and 2011. And squad members JoJo Wollacott, Charlie Barker, Panutche Camara, and Armando Junior Quitirna have all played for Charlton previously, with three of them likely to play some part this evening.
It’s a Tuesday night away game, which is an unusual venture out for me, but I’ve sloped off from work an hour early and have come up on the coach, which is always easier for both evening games and games in London. Sat next to Sooty on the coach and at the game and had a good chat about a variety of things.
It is my first trip to The Valley. There is a programme, which Sooty had flagged up on the forum at the weekend, so scuttled quickly to get one of them,
and had a wander around taking pictures and a poke in their club shop. I can’t help myself. I need to find or create some more metal surfaces in the house to be able to deal with even more fridge magnets, this one is quite large. (And we still need some for Crawley.)
On the whole the programme is decent, eighty pages and some good articles in there, but there are only two pages on us in there, one of which is a nice piece from Steve Herbert, and the other managed to fail the proof reading test as I’m fairly sure we haven’t changed our nickname from The Reds to The Res.
In a rarity for me I got food at the ground and was happy to see Pukka Pies, always a good reminder of my home city of Leicester. And it wasn’t lukewarm in the slightest, if anything I think there might be a volcano somewhere which is missing its lava. I have one less layer of skin on the inside of my mouth.
The teams come out onto the pitch for the pre-game line up and there comes the unwanted addition of a red smoke flare thrown onto the pitch from our support. The Clangers aren’t only on the forum.
Charlton were in their traditional home kit of red shirts and socks and white socks (and almost a full set of players in yellow boots), and we were in out great looking blue third kit.
We start reasonably well, and an early attack gets the ball out to Ronan Darcy on the right wing, but his cross is a bit long and drifts out for a goal kick. There isn’t a lot happening early on, Charlton get a couple of shots away, one is wide, and the other is more of a pass back to JoJo Wollacott. Then we start having some decent possession. A long clearance from Wollacott bounces in their box, does that count as a shot? It was on target and would have trickled over the line if all their players had dropped down dead.
A Darcy cross flicks off a defender and forces a save from the keeper. We get a free kick in the middle of the attacking half; it is worked wide but the subsequent cross is too long. We haven’t quite managed to nail the correct range for crosses yet, they are either going long or hitting the first man.
It is noticeable that Rob Elliot is quite animated and involved on the touchline, there are a few occasions where players are over getting instructions from him as play is progressing. After one such chat with Darcy there is an attack down the left, the ball goes to Will Swan, and he feeds Tola Showunmi, who cuts inside into the box and curls a beauty of a shot into the top corner, and we lead 1-0.
Which brings a chant from the substantial away support of ‘We’re winning away, we’re winning away, how shit must you be, we’re winning away.’
Charlton have a couple of minutes with a bit of pressure, and get a corner which is punched clear, headed back in, headed clear again, and then they have a shot which fizzes wide. But we settle and are putting decent pressure on their players all over the pitch, forcing them to get rid of the ball quickly and inaccurately and are winning a lot of cheap throw ins from it.
The officials signal for a minute of added time at the end of the half and the half time whistle goes with us leading 1-0 and the Charlton fans booing their players off.
The food and drink outlet is swamped, as they have only bothered opening the one stand by the entrance, the other one inside the ground being closed. And they managed to beat us in the early closing stakes as well, as Sooty went to get something not long into the second half and they had shut up entirely.
It is a quiet start to the second half from both sides, and there is nearly ten minutes gone in the half before we get anything resembling a decent attack going. We attack down the left, get it over to the right and Darcy (who on the whole is being well shepherded by their full back) gets a shot that is well saved. Panutche Camara follows up and his shot is well saved as well, it goes back out to Ade Adeyemo, who nearly manages a swing and a miss with more slice than a branch of Greggs. It falls to another player, but they are relieved of the ball and Charlton manage to clear. That little burst of life from the team wakes the away support up and put them back in fine voice again.
Joy Mukena picks up a yellow card for a challenge on the left side outside the penalty area, which seemed a bit harsh. The cross cum shot from the resulting free kick goes wide.
Play is steady, neither side is creating much, but general play is more controlled from Crawley, and we look almost comfortable, an attack down the left see the play switched and put over to Benjamin Tanimu on the right and he hits a shot from about thirty five yards out which dips somewhat worryingly for the keeper to have to make a good save.
Of course, I no sooner make the above observation in my notebook and Charlton go up the other end. A nothing ball across see Wollacott start to come for the ball, only to stop and find himself in no mans land and the Charlton attacker has an easy job of lobbing the ball over his mis-positioned head and into the net to equalise things at 1-1. Which doesn’t dampen the ongoing noisy support of the away fans, if anything, we get louder.
We make out first substitution with Showunmi coming off to be replaced by Bradley Ibrahim. We attack down the right and Tanimu gets a bit of a shove in the back near the penalty area and goes down over dramatically and the ref waves any claims of a foul away (which might not have been the case if he hadn’t made such a meal of it). It is his last action as he and Darcy are substituted, with Harry Forster and Tyreese John-Jules coming on to replace them.
Another attack sees us work the ball out from the back down the right, and then across to the left, where Adeyemo plays it back towards the right and Jeremy Kelly picks it up thirty yards out and shoots. The keeper saves by pushing it away to the right of the area and Max Anderson (who contrary to some sources pre-game, obviously wasn’t suspended) follows up and slams it in from a tight angle for us to retake the lead 2-1.
Before the restart we make our final two substitutions with Camara and Swan going off to be replaced by Jack Roles and Rushian Hepburn-Murphy. From the restart Charlton get a corner almost straight away, and it comes in and a shot is taken. It is high, wide, and not very handsome.
The board goes up for six added minutes. It isn’t nervy in the slightest. I say with no fingernails left and now holes in the tips of each finger in my gloves. There are a lot of nervous glances up at the clock on the scoreboard and it doesn’t appear to be moving at all. The ninety minutes have flown by, these six minutes are taking about three days.
Rob Elliot picks up a booking as he was down the touchline somewhere past Charlton’s technical area and may well have said something to an official as the ref trots over forty yards to wave the yellow card at him.
Charlton get a corner right at the death, by the time they take it there is about ten seconds left of the six added minutes, and they send their keeper up for it. We clear the box and someone tries a vastly ambitious shot from the edge of our own area which looks like it might not even reach the goal even if it was on target, and as it is retrieved by a scurrying Charlton defender the ref blows the final whistle and we have won 2-1.
Cue lots of happy away fans and scenes from players and the manager reminiscent of the last couple of months of last season. Whilst the Charlton fans booed a bit more and traipsed away unhappy with their team’s performance. Albeit there is no need to be saying they lost to ‘a pub team’, or ‘relegation certainties’ as some of their more classless supporters were saying on the BBC HYS.
Most teams around us got wins as well, so we only went up one place in the league, leapfrogging Northampton Town, to go up to nineteenth. We were eighteenth at the final whistle, but in the later kick-off, Rotherham got a late winner against a Lincoln team who I assume were doing it on purpose and stayed above us. But it is tight. Charlton stayed in twelfth, but they are now only three points ahead of us, so we are only a win away from the top half of the table (granted it would need to be by a lot of goals and everyone else would need to lose).
There was no mention of what the crowd was. It was said we had sold more than 600 tickets, but if there were 8,000 in total at the game then they were fiddling the stats.
It was a happy coach going back to Crawley, and the coach voted Jeremy Kelly as their man of the match (with Max Anderson second and Charlie Barker third). Two wins on the spin, and five games unbeaten in the league now. Let’s keep that going as we go again on Saturday, with a home game against Stevenage.
Come on you reds.