so who was there for the rearranged game that night

letthegoodtimesroll

if you have to ask, you weren't there...we fell out of the pub from an early start and turned up after kick off and i recall supporting the team in red for about 5 minutes before i remembered we were the away team and orient were the ones in red...

Airman Brown

Oh, yes. And the abandoned game. And I got to New Cross for the one that was called off 24 hours earlier.

The odd thing was that you knew we were never going to score. It was just a question of whether they would.

No.1 in South London

yes, bloody New England Teamen ! very vague memories of the match though, but recall the relief and the euphoria on the way home.

Miserableoldgit

Funnily enough I got to New Cross then & the same happened with the Dag & Red replay afew years back:
Must be an East London Thang.

Stone

I remember the abandoned game well. The main picture that sticks in my mind was the ball stopping in a puddle from a backpass and about 4 players all racing for the ball and carnage when they all reached it at the same time.

Steve Dowman

I was at both, though the memory is a bit hazy. It took a fair bit of pleading with the parents to be allowed to go again the next night. I remember it being a real dump but not much more.

Goonerhater

was at all 3

Oggy Red

I was there for the abandoned game.

I'd cycled all the way from Bromley Common to my mate's flat in Leytonstone in the pissing rain (he was a Hammers fan from work). He'd come to the match with me and so we went back to his place to attack his collection of tinnies, before getting wrecked with his mates in the evening.

So I had a good time anyway.

bingaddick

I went to all three. I didn't hear that the second game was abandonned until I was travelling on A102M just before the Blackwall Tunnel, which was a total pain.

My greatest memory of the third game was the save in injury time by Jeff Wood - absolutely world class!! Kept it at nil nil and saved our bacon!

seth plum

Was at the abandoned game, I remember it was weird walking back to the tube at 4pm with no one to scurry and lurk next to who had a transistor with the final scores, totally disorientating (sic), I do remember the abandonment was announced at half time, and the feeling had a kind of finality, that feeling was back at that West ham game that was called off when we were all milling about outside the Valley.
For the called off game i was on a train back from Glasgow, eventually heading for Dartford, frantic for news, got to dartford at about 10pm and scrabbled around for a wireless to discover our fate, only to find that the teeming rain I encountered in London had called the match off, and re-scheduled for the following night.
The next night blagged an unbooked place on the coach from the Valley to Orient, stood next to a great and friendly Orient fan, who was worried about their fate. Our support was phenomenal but our approach to the game was negative squared. We seem to have spent the entire match passing it back to Jeff Wood. I have a distinct memory of Dick Tydeman cupping his ears towards our support to get us to sing louder, and I also remember the late Jeff Wood save which basically kept us up.
On the coach back across the river, the feeling of relief was overwhelming from all of us. We thought it was "brilliant" but our football that night was appalling. I believe Orient had another game left and managed to save themselves, which made me happy for the really decent Orient fan I had been chatting to.

Big William

I went to all three, got as far as Woolwich for the cancelled game, I think some Charlton fans who had already turned back told us it was off. It still seems somehow totally Charlton that we'd let players go off to America and then ended up fighting for our lives in the last game.
Like Seth says, it was a rearguard action from us, the second half seemed to last for four hours. Pretty sure that Orient beat Cardiff in their last game and stayed up, I think it was the year Blackpool finished their games in what appeared to be complete safety and after a wierd sequence of results ended up going down.

Oggy Red

Big Will, good memory re Blackpool.

If I remember they were 13th in the table having played all their games on schedule and their players went off on holiday. I doubt it ever occurred to them how events would unfold - and they would actually be relegated.

But flukily that's exactly what happened. 10 days later they were 21st and down.

RedZed333

I remember after the match there was chaos and when we eventually got back to the coaches some of them had already left so we all bundled on to one coach, must have been about 150 of us on it at one time...

The old bill had to chuck a load off, including me despite having a coach ticket...

We all went to Liverpool Street I think it was and walked down to Charing Cross for the train, many of us had no money but never paid as there was too many of us to stop...

Just as we left Woolwich Dockyard some clown kept pulling on the emergency stop and we were stuck in the bloody tunnel for ages...

That was the last match I went to before moving to Sunderland, in fact I think we had lost 3-0 to Sunderland the week before, I went to that match and remember thinking, 'What a fcuking dump, who'd want to live here...?'

Thirty Three years later....