Once upon a time....

As most of you know I've been a Charlton fan for over 30 years, and unlike some 'supporters' of big clubs, I had no say in that decision. My fate was decided a long time before I was a twinkle in the eye. My Dad's Uncle was responsible for taking a mischievous young lad to the Valley in the 1950's. He was lifted over the crowd on the huge East Terrace and stood at the front to watch men chase a big heavy ball about. That young lad was my Dad.

My Dad of course passed that 'delight' onto me and I too stood on that same huge East Terrace, at one time the biggest in Europe, the difference being that there were not 30,000 people on it but more like 3,000. On a good day!

I watched us in the mid 1970's play as I and the history books recall some entertaining stuff with players such as Hales, Flanagan, Powell & Peacock (now Assistant Manager). Entertaining football never won us anything. I remember coming 7th once in the old Div 2 but there was never any investment and players were sold - Hales to Derby, Flanagan to Palarse.

We spiralled down to the old Div 3 but had a manager called Mike Bailey who took us up first time of asking before disappearing to Brighton. Alan Mullery who has the great honour of being both a Palace and Brighton twat, then took over and bought about 10 players and sold some of our best ones.

We were pretty crap and eventually the Gliksten family, who had owned the club since the 50's, sold out with the ground in disrepair and with further fine players sold such as Paul Walsh and Paul Elliott (to this day, the best centre half I have seen wear a Charlton shirt). We then had a few years of fireworks with a new young chairman and owner.

His name was Mark Hulyer and to his credit was and still is I understand a huge Addick, and tried to do a 1980's Roman Abramovich. He of course only had a few grand and not a gazillion but he did sign Alan Simonsen (simply the best player I have ever seen play for Charlton) and one or two others.

It all went kaput of course. The council made the ground two and a bit sides and the old lady was a tip and only 4,000 of us used to witness it every other week. We were 5 minutes from going bust and were saved by a bloke called John Fryer, who was some big wig at Sunley Construction.

Of course most Addicks would like to kill Mr Fryer, despite his saving us with some last minute cash. He died in fact a long time ago, probably with a broken heart because he was so despised. The reason of course was that it was his idea to hand out photocopied leaflets, ironically at a game at home to Crystal Palarse, saying that the club was leaving the Valley to play at Selhurst Park the week after.

After that in 1986 Lennie Lawrence, now director of football at Bristol Rovers, and before he was at Charlton a local secondary school PE teacher (he was cheap) amazingly took us up to the old Division 1 (to my younger readers, now the Premiership). I was at Carlisle the day we went up - 2-0 down with 30 mins left. We won 3-2 and liked to do things the hard way.

We stayed in Division 1 for 4 seasons - a minor miracle and probably will never be repeated. We then got relegated but for Lennie it was time to move on and he went to spend Middlesbrough chairman's Steve Gibson's money.

Of course by that time the fans had found out of diversity some fan-power winning seats in local elections and we had a new board in place, all fans including an unknown bloke (and still unknown by most other clubs' fans) called Richard Murray. We still had no money but the club for the first time in 35 years had a plan, every penny went to a return to the Valley.

Therefore when Lawrence left, the club had to go for a cheap option. Their names were Steve Gritt (now Addicks Academy Director) and a bloke called Alan Curbishley.

Alan Curbishley has probably been told or read the above story many times. Thanks to him the last half of my 30 years as a Charlton fan is very different from the first half.

I have said for a while that it is time for him and the club to move on and he did on Saturday afternoon. He has however got every reason to be very proud of himself, we are proud of him. The man is a legend.

Thank you for listening.