Charlton held by fellow-Reds…
For Morecambe FC, the closest they had previously ever come to interacting with the football world and a Charlton was when 1966 World Cup Winner Bobby opened the long lamented North Stand at the old Christie Park. As far as the team based at The Valley in south east London and the Shrimps are concerned, two very distinct histories collided today. During the 1970s – as Morecambe struggled to stay in business in the Northern Premier League – Athletic was hosting an iconic Rock Festival with The Who headlining at their massive natural bowl of a ground. The Valley was such a huge venue at that time that it had held 75,000 people in FA Cup matches in the past.
Later, as Morecambe faced homelessness and potential extinction as dodgy people with an even dodgier agenda tried to sell Christie Park for re-development as a DIY store, their fans united to stop this happening and kept the club in business. Charlton fans took this one step further. They actually created a completely new political party during 1992 in order to challenge the local Labour council in Greenwich which was in favour of the Valley being demolished and redeveloped for housing. This was at a time when the Addicks (a Sarf London bastardisation of `Haddock’ apparently; battered versions of which were for sale at a favoured chippy near their home ground) had been playing at Crystal Palace’s Selhurst Park for seven long years as the Valley was abandoned and actually derelict. Will Magee tells us:
“In the end, the Valley Party won 10.9% of the vote in Greenwich, which although not enough to gain them a councillor did at least serve as a resounding endorsement of their platform. They ate into the Labour vote and hampered the re-election bids of several prominent councillors, stunning their opponents in the process. One of the councillors who lost his seat was the Chair of the London Borough of Greenwich Planning Committee, the body which had rejected the redevelopment plans for The Valley, Simon Oelman. In an interview on the Charlton Life forum from 2010, he was candid about Labour’s position, saying: “It’s fair to say that we didn’t see the value of having a football club in the area.” He also admitted to underestimating the Valley Party. “It was a brilliantly run campaign and more professional than any of the established parties managed,” he said. “It was a surprise to me and all the Labour Party, and we didn’t really take it seriously at first. But when we started to knock on doors and more and more people said they were voting Valley we thought: ‘Ah, there’s something going on here’… we didn’t really know what to do and by then it was too late.””[1]
Charlton fans in the shape of the Valley Party therefore took direct action to get their club’s ground re-opened and updated. Well done to them.
In subsequent years, Addicks icon Alan Curbishley (who was commentating on the live Charlton TV feed of the game tonight) led the revitalised club to the Promised Land of the Premiership during 1998. But after he left in 2006, their fall from grace has been spectacular both on and off the field. Supporters revolted again en masse as recently as five years ago; threw things such as foam soccer balls onto the pitch in their hundreds as a means to disrupt games; boycotted other fixtures altogether and applied other measures of social protest until the ownership they were unhappy with at the time sold its control of what was then a Championship club altogether.
Their reward was relegation to League One at the end of the 2019-20 season. At the beginning of the current campaign, Nigel Adkins had replaced Birmingham-bound Lee Bowyer as Manager. He took the relegated club straight to the bottom of League One by winning only two of their opening thirteen fixtures and was sacked on 21st October last to be replaced by currently interim Manager Johnnie Johnson. One of the few positive things the ex-Scunthorpe United physiotherapist and phenomenally successful Manager had done prior to being dismissed was to sign Morecambe’s Club Captain and inspiration Sam Lavelle. Sam has been injured since but scored two goals in nine games for them before being laid low. Since the appointment of Mr Johnson, Athletic have lost only one game. Their current League One form is four games won and none lost. They were twelfth in the League One table prior to tonight’s fixture on the back of a 2-0 win against table-topping Plymouth Argyle last Saturday in London.
Morecambe, on the other hand, have found life in League One a bit of a struggle at times this season. Their last-minute win at Fleetwood last Saturday as Cole Stockton scored another literally unforgettably brilliant goal with virtually the last kick of the game was the team’s first league win in their last five league outings – of which they had lost three. Fleetwood are a poor side though and Charlton aren’t. So tonight would provide a further test of how well recent defensive lapses particularly at set-pieces have been addressed by Stephen Robinson and his players.
First team coach Diarmuid O’Carroll assessed the job facing Morecambe this evening in these terms:
“They have a lot of quality within their squad, the money they have behind them, the size of the club and the support that they have, they are a big club. I think there was twenty-odd-thousand at their game the other day, we have gone away and watched their games, reviewed them and we know that they are a good side. You look at them and they should be in the top-half of the table, we will go out there and compete, and on our day we are a very good side as well. They have had a real bounce since the new manager took over, I don’t think he’s been given the job yet – I don’t know what they are waiting on but it will be a tough game. Every game is tough, it is such a cliché to say every game is tough but it is, we have showed that we can cut it against some of the best teams, home and away.”
The Charlton Manager said this before the game:
“The mood around the training ground has been really good, the lads have been in bubbly form. Obviously winning games helps – you come in on a Monday after a win on a Saturday and everyone’s got a smile on their face and a little bounce. (We are) just trying to obviously keep the mood and spirits high. But also we’ve got to be serious and we’ve got to have our clear focus on the upcoming test because we’ve got some tricky games coming up. You’ve only got to look at the top end of the pitch there in Stockton, who has scored 12 goals already and he scored from inside his own half at the weekend, so there’s obvious threats. It’s a difficult place to go. They’ll make it difficult for you. Up there on the coast it can be a little bit windy at times as well and conditions can be difficult, so we’re going to turn up with the right attitude there and they certainly aren’t going to roll over and make it easy for us.”
For the visitors, former PNE and Exeter striker Jayden Stockley was still suspended after being sent-off last week at Burton Albion. No goalkeeper was selected to sit on the bench either for whatever reason.
It had been a beautiful bright, crisp autumn day by the North Lancashire seaside prior to the game. It started under a jet black sky as an astonishingly large amount of fans from London – nearly seven hundred – noisily shouted their support from the away end. This would be a lot for a Saturday match – but for a mid-week game, it is simply extraordinary.
The chanting and drumming had hardly died down from kick-off when the visitors took the lead. Athletic were attacking down their right, pinging the ball confidently and accurately around between their front players. Diallang Jaiyesimi caught Jökull Andrésson completely flat-footed as he took a low shot towards the near post. The young Icelander showed his inexperience yet again by being caught-out with a shot which he should have seen coming but instead could only help over the line after he had actually moved the wrong way. It was a poor start by the goalkeeper and he went on to put on a very weak performance tonight, with a succession of really poor clearances right from the start of the match until the end of it.
Charlton, though, continued to impress with their quick, accurate passing. They are a surprisingly small side in The Land Of The Giants which is League One more often than not. But in Jaiyesimi, Conor Washington and perhaps particularly Elliot Lee, they had three forwards which would give any defence problems with their speed and skill on the ball. Morecambe offered little going forward in the opening twenty minutes or so and were constantly caught on the break as the Addicks posed problems for them every time they attacked. Andrésson redeemed himself a little with a good save from Lee as the visitors fashioned a couple more half-chances before going even further ahead after twenty-seven minutes. It was a simple goal – a long clearance by away goalkeeper Craig McGillivray and a determined effort to get to the ball first by Washington saw him lob it over young Jökull, who was again caught in No Man’s Land.
At this point, it seemed just a matter of how many the team from South London were going to score and – to be fair – they continued to dominate possession, particularly during the second half. But Morecambe dug-in and at times played some neat, positive football of their own. They reduced the arrears after Charlton Captain Chris Gunter clearly brought-down Morecambe’s Goal Machine in the away penalty area just a minute after the visitors had gone further ahead. Was Gunter the last man? Probably. Was it a cynical foul? Definitely. But officious and fussy Referee Any Haines only proffered a Yellow Card. But in the immortal words of somebody-or-other, I’ve seen them given… Cole Stockton picked himself up and slammed the ball home from the spot to register his lucky thirteenth goal of the season so far.
(I was personally wondering if the Referee had left his cards in the Dressing Room until this point because he let a lot of niggly and `professional’ fouls go in the first half where he booked only Gunter when he might have sent him off. Maybe there was something in his half-time tea because he issued a yellow to virtually anything that moved during the second period. Once again, this was not a performance worthy of the EFL and Mr Haines was clearly not fit enough to keep up with play a lot of the time. How does that work?)
Despite the poor officiating, this was a really good game to watch. Athletic took a deserved lead back to the Changing Rooms at half time. Throughout the second half, they continued to play positive, attacking football. There was no time-wasting; cheating or play-acting. Charlton were here with only one thing on their minds: to win.
But they didn’t. Morecambe rode their luck at times but equalised when Captain O’Connor headed home beautifully from a corner after 72 minutes. Callum Jones had tried to replicate his goal at Fleetwood from another free-kick a minute earlier – but missed this time. Later on, they could have won it as the ball was bundled home after an effort had hit the Charlton crossbar and looped skywards before falling back into play.
So it ended two each. The visitors were probably marginally the better of the two teams tonight, technically at least. But in terms of spirit, the Shrimps came out on top. The way they collectively hung on in there after giving away two poor goals says a lot about their determination as a unit and their loyalty to their Manager.
The single point saw both teams slide down League One this evening: the Addicks to fourteenth and Morecambe to nineteenth.
Morecambe: 20 Jökull Andrésson; 2 Ryan McLaughlin; 3 Greg Leigh (Y); 4 Anthony O’Connor (C); 6 Callum Jones; 9 Cole Stockton; 15 Ryan Delaney; 17 Jonah Ayunga (Y); 19 Shane McLoughlin; 25 Alfie McCalmont; 28 Courtney Duffus (18 Adam Phillips 70’).
Subs Not Used: 12 André da Silva Mendes; 7 Wes McDonald; 8 Toumani Diagouraga; 21 Ryan Cooney; 22 Liam Gibson; 31 Scott Wooten.
Charlton Athletic: 1 Craig McGillivray; 2 Chris Gunter (C) (Y) (20 Charlie Kirk 77’); 3 Ben Purrington; 4 George Dobson (Y); 5 Akin Famewo; 7 Diallang Jaiyesimi (23 Corey Blackett-Taylor 73’); 11 Alex Gilbey; 14 Conor Washington; 17 Elliot Lee; 25 Josh Davison (48 Mason Burstow 85’); 28 Sean Clare.
Subs Not Used: 10 Albie Morgan; 26 Ben Watson; 31 Nathan Harness; 50 Deji Elerewe.
Ref: Andy Haines.
Att: 4,009 (690 from Charlton: The Valley Party salutes you all, Comrades! Safe journey home…)
[1] https://www.vice.com/en/article/ywzvj7/remembering-when-charlton-fans-took-on-the-labour-party-and-won
