Chesterfield Memories

Addickted

Anyone on here old enough to have gone to (and remembers) the old Third Division game at Saltergate back in the '80/'81 season?

I saw Stone's comments and the memories of that game (and whole season) came flooding back.

Apart from Haleseys goal from just inside their half, I still have a 'souvenir' from that game of a Derby County scarf. I believe at the time we were top of the third and Chesterfield were pushing us hard in second place. For some reason - possibly the weather - Derby's game was called off and a few of their fans decided to visit Saltergate and cause some problems in the home end. I remember watching it kick off and the OB steaming in to calm things down. They rounded up those Derby fans who hadn't been nicked and brought them round to the 'safety' of the away end.

About a hundred of them were marched around the pitch to the away end shouting 'Derby and Charlton' and were brought onto the open teraace behind the goal........... where they took a hell of a kicking from Charlton. I distinctly remember two of them jumping over the wall at the rear of the terrace down to the street below to get away - it was at least a 30 foot drop.

So come on, apart from Stone, who was there?

There were some real hairy incidents that season as we went most places in large numbers.

AFKABartram

how many would we have had there ? 500 ?

You're talking 25 years ago now. I wonder just how many of those 500 still go Charlton on a regular basis. Not too many now i would of thought ?

Addickted

I would have thought about 1,500 up there D. I'll check when I get home, but I'm sure the crowd was just under 9k - which was fairly large for any third division club at the time.

I remember big Charlton turnouts at Huddersfield, Exeter, Newport County (that was my first day at 'proper' work and I took the afternoon off to go to the game - it was a tuesday night and we hadn't won away for about 35 matches!), Swindon, Hull City and of course the promotion game at Carlisle.

1905

According to my bumper book of football stats there were 9,675 at the game, so I imagine plenty of away support.

I went to one or two london and lononish away games that season and we had very big away supports.

letthegoodtimesroll

i remember we all went up there for the last away game of the season (not sure if its the one you're talking about though)...i thought we lost it 2-1...the away end was packed and i think there were some down the side...we all went across the pitch before the game and stood in what had become an empty home end only to be invited by the ob to stroll back to the away end again before the game could start and so the home fans could come back in...1,500 would seem about right, hard to tell when it is all standing and you're in the middle of it though we were taking good crowds with us for a lot of the away games around then...thought that was the game where we then played bobby charlton's preston on the tuesday night and beat them 3-1 to win promotion (wasn't that 1975 ?)

Red_Pete_in_Dubai

LTGTR - weren't Preston managed by Nobby Stiles at that time, in 1975, or has my memory completely failed me (not for the first time)?

_MrDick

[cite] Red_Pete:[/cite]LTGTR - weren't Preston managed by Nobby Stiles at that time, in 1975, or has my memory completely failed me (not for the first time)?

I think LTGTR is right, Sir Bobby was manager of Preston that night

LenGlover

The 1975 Preston promotion game was at The Valley.

Red_Pete_in_Dubai

You are quite right chaps; Sir Bobby was manager up to 1975 (that game at the Valley must have been his last game in charge). Harry Catterick followed him (1975 - 1977) and then Nobby Stiles took charge (1977 - 1981). An impressive list of managers, with two World Cup Winners!!

Al the Addick

yep i was there that day (only a boy though so didn't join in lol) if i remember rightly weren't they finally put in the stand along the side of the pitch? also remember it kicking of big time outside Huddersfield that season.

Stone

The game where Killer scored was definately a 0-1 win and I can remember seeing that goal from the side of the pitch. He scored it in the goal to our right. Was that part of the side not covered terracing? Sure I would have remembered if it was seats.
Away support was good around this time, not uncommon to get 1500 or more to most places.

Addickted

[cite] Al the Addick:[/cite] also remember it kicking of big time outside Huddersfield that season.

It was chaos at Leeds Road that season both before and after the game - we had over 2,000 up there. They absolutely mullered us on the pitch but we went onto win 1- 0 thanks toa flukey header from Phil Walker.

Very nasty outside the ground as we walked back to the Leeds Road - a lot of us were manfully saved by B Mob returning from their white vans in the car park adjacent to the ground with all sorts of wooden and metal implements. A thrown brick broke my nose that day - I was covered in my own blood.

Oh happy days!

Oscar

I went to a lot of the away games that year and can definitely remember huddersfield but not too sure about chesterfield.

I think it was that season that we also had Harlow in the FA Cip and we all stood on the grass slopes. I remember that it was quite dodgy at the end of that game as well...

Al the Addick

Harlow was funny as it was p'ing down and everyone was slipping over whilst the police dogs were trying to bite everyone in sight! think the trouble was with Spurs fans who turned up that day to support Harlow.

Addickted

Just checked and the crowd at Huddersfield was 11,329 that season - bearing in mind our average home crowd that season was 7,206 made the 2,000+ travelling Addicks a fair percentage of our home crowd.

The Cup game against Harlow was the start of a good run for us, which included a win at Fulham in front of 17,050 (they don't get much more than that now) and getting knocked out at Portman Road, who were the 1st Division leaders at the time, in front of 30,221.

That Ippo team were fantastic at the time -

Cooper, Osman, McCall, Thyssen, Beattie, Butcher, Wark, Muhren, Mariner, Brazil and Gates.

Stone

That Ipswich game was like a cup final for us at the time. We never seemed to get big clubs in the cup. I can still remember Paddy Powell grining like a cheshire whilst about to take a corner down our end. Not sure if it was the roar that we made because we'd won a corner or someone had said something to him.