Lets get the insignificant part out of the ways first.
25th February 1984 Vetch Field. Swansea City 1 (1) (Pascoe 9) Charlton Athletic 0 (0) Att: 5,222
Swansea: Hughes, Marustik, McQuillan, Evans, Stevenson, Lewis, Robinson, Richards, Saunders, Walsh, Pascoe. Unused sub: Lake.
Charlton: Johns, O’Shea, Dickenson, Smith (Robinson 70), Dowman, Berry, Gritt, Jones, Hales, Aizlewood, Flanagan.
Referee: T Spencer (Salisbury)
The main course……
In retrospect, the Swansea game could have been the last in Charltons 79 year history. In fact The Mercury was predicting it would be. The Football league had set a 5.00pm deadline on 8th March 1984 for a rescue package by the Sunley Group to be approved by Mr Justice Mervyn Davies at the High Courts. He did so at 4.35pm on that day, which must have upset journalist Mike Langley.
Four days before D-Day, in a column headed ‘Goodbye. Good riddance if Charlton crash’, the Sunday People columnist wrote “Obviously, the consortium backed by builders as big as Sunley won’t have much trouble coughing up the required million to relaunch the club as ‘Charlton 1984’. But why do they bother? I can’t see a football reason. They’re not snapping up a sleeping giant but a permanently paralysed pygmy. The death of Derby or Wolves would have struck at the very roots of foootball. But who is going to miss a moribund club like Charlton, in a city that has twice as many sides as it needs? (note from H&A: sounds like Chirpy). The nation needs houses more than it needs standing room for 7,000 people with nothing better to do than hang around the haunted Valley. Sunley’s could make no greater contribution to the game than by turning the whole ten acres into semi’s and all the Directors who sold good players to buy poor ones deserve to be buried in the foundations”
On the same day, Patrick Collins wrote in his Mail on Sunday column: “ There are those who say it’s a good thing that such clubs should die; that the rest of the league will somehow emerge leaner, fitter and suitably chastened. Fashionable claptrap, spouted by soul-less fools who never worshipped gods with names like Fenton and Hewie, big Johnny Summers and tiny Billy Kiernan and that splendid full-back called Jock Campbell who once said “thanks” when I threw the ball back to him”.
Very well put Patrick, who has been a good friend to Charlton, and sport in general, over the years.
And desert…….
*Extract from entry 10th March 1984. A 3-3 home draw against Grimsby Town in front of 7,626.
New Chairman John Fryer paraded with his two boardroom colleagues Mike Norris and Richard Collins on the pitch before kick-off. Future England international Rob Lee scored on his senior debut.
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Comments
As an aside when i was at uni in Swansea i went to the Vetch a few times (£3 for Swansea uni students) and i have no felt so intimiated as an Englishman in the Swansea end.
Wanker.
Anyone remember the name of the prick in the SubStandard who wrote 'Let them Die'?
So 25 years where are we? Playing Swansea away and in a bit of a mess with, seemingly unfounded, rumours of Administration hanging over us.
So what! It's been a bloody exciting 25 years in between.
Here's to another quarter century like the last by which time I will be ga ga or dead or both.
I'd do more than gob on it.
WHEN we go up this season I'm going to find his grave and have a massive party all over it.
Lol!
I think I'm misunderstood.
Michael Herd was the bloke in the Substandard, a paper whose only useful function is to line the cats litter tray.
Well, we were young.
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PS: Regarding earlier posts - I haven't seen "Dog-Shit Matey" for a few years now.