Had a funny feeling this might happen when new kit was launched. Can't be robins with white breasts. Perhaps we need a song like I'm a believer by the Monkees... Or another monkey themed tune. Why? Because like monkeys we now have red bottoms!
What's happened to Len??? I was very much looking forward to his reaction to this suggestion ;-)
FWIW Roland doesn't strike me as some power mad loony like other owners and I can't believe that having dipped their toes in the water now they would even dream of pushing this through. The Red Robin lives to tweet on I reckon.
The RRR is part of our history, its Charlton so it has to stay. Wouldn't feel the same without it. Although the "come on" song when the players come out at half time makes me laugh and is cringe worthy so has to go.
Young executives like her and Ben Kensell (formerly of Arsenal Football Club) want to make a name for themselves. I can understand that.
However, rather like Kensell's Crossbars nonsense, she's asked the question, been told the answer and that should be an end to it.
She's a CEO at a football club not the European Commission so she doesn't need to carry on asking the same thing again until she gets the "right" answer.
As others have intimated above the Red, Red Robin (RRR), naff as some perceive it, unites Charlton fans past and present alive or dead.
She and the other bloke, Kensell, prattle on about "match day experience." I strongly suspect that phrase is marketing bullshit for "how do we get more money from the 'customers' " but if she is sincere then she should realise or swiftly learn that football is an emotional experience and there are few things more emotional than uniting the generations even if that emotion does not manifest itself overtly and demonstrably.
Yes it may look like fans are indifferent to RRR sometimes but that is because over many years it has become part of the fabric and what we are. It doesn't need acknowledging all the time because it's "there" and part of us.
Is there anybody who has oversight of the match event experience at Charlton. I mean the caterers only focus on catering, ticketing on tickets, PA announcements on announcing and playing music, other individuals on presentations, or mascots and so on. It often feels very diverse and ad hoc, which has a pleasant sweet amateur nature about it, nobody wants to be manipulated, but also means that sometimes things can be shambolic too. Last season I was there for an event which was going to be on the pitch pre-match, but then it became a half time thing, it involved a great deal of standing around while one person was waiting for, or checking with another person, and involved a fair amount of shrugging, without anybody seemingly knowing just what was supposed to be happening. Of course as always people muddle through, even if they are muttering as they do. Do we need a matchday 'script' known to everybody, which reigns supreme over the event and which all participants is in thrall to, and uses as a definitive guide?
People will always suggest change, its always useful to look at change but not implement it on a whim (like that lot from north Surrey)
I have seen in our museum archives the board memo in the 60's to push forward the decision that our nickname would become "The Red Devils"....thankfully it never happened and during those Selhurst days the short lived "Valiants" moniker was returned to "The Addicks" as it had been since 1907/8 when it first appeared.
Our club could almost copyright five elements as a key component of its identity they are that strong; i - The Valley ii - The Red Red Robin iii - "The Addicks" as a nickname iv - Watt Tylers Sword as a club badge v - as a follower of the above, retaining the right to whinge about anything and everything.
I don't oppose dropping RRR but it has to be for the right reasons. I feel RRR very much encapsulates our club's qualities very well - open, family-friendly, plenty of history, tradition in a modern era. I do sometimes lament the fact that when we visit other clubs, they have a much more fortress mentality that I feel we need - no visiting club or set of fans will be intimidated by RRR, and if we want to build Fortress Valley, then dropping RRR could be the way forward. It's not everyone's cup of tea but I felt that Wigan set the atmosphere really well with the theme from Gladiator as the opening tune, which is impressive considering their plastic stadium and handful of fans.
I'd like to hear RRR in the pre-match if it is dropped though, preferably as the last song before This is The Valley or the players come on, as it does get some of our fans pumped for the game.
People will always suggest change, its always useful to look at change but not implement it on a whim (like that lot from north Surrey)
I have seen in our museum archives the board memo in the 60's to push forward the decision that our nickname would become "The Red Devils"....thankfully it never happened and during those Selhurst days the short lived "Valiants" moniker was returned to "The Addicks" as it had been since 1907/8 when it first appeared.
Our club could almost copyright five elements as a key component of its identity they are that strong; i - The Valley ii - The Red Red Robin iii - "The Addicks" as a nickname iv - Watt Tylers Sword as a club badge v - as a follower of the above, retaining the right to whinge about anything and everything.
If clubs or fans on their behalf registered their 'heritage' what would it consist of and what would it be for Charlton, and what if fans had a veto on such changes enshrined in the rules somehow, and of course how could it be implemented or enforced, finally does it have any value?
I wonder how many times we've been through this in the last 30 years. Certainly too many for me to think we would ever allow it, so I don't take it seriously.
This is, however, why I don't "get" the shirt. It seems obvious to me that if you know you are perceived to be a threat to the club's identity - fairly or unfairly - you don't dabble with the symbols that define that identity when there is no practical benefit to doing so.
People have different views about the shirt, but I know a lot who really do not like it. I can't get worked up about it, because it will be gone in 12 months. But to me it's not a Charlton shirt and you shouldn't mess with these things just because you can.
By the way, just how "intimidating" is Millwall's song (which I admit I quite respect as a piece of bespoke nonsense)?
I agree with you about the shirt, Airman. Dark red is a forceful colour - it signifies danger and blood - yet its gravitas is diminished by the white area pointlessly applied to the upper torso. From 20 yards, our players will look as though all their power and strength is in the belly, while the upper body drifts off into the ether.
And look at our 'third' kit - that horrendous synthetic confection of sherbet yellow blending into fizzy orange, like the wet dream of a six-year-old child with attention-deficit disorder, high on toxic e-numbers. What gets me is that design consultants are paid an absolute fortune to come up with these nightmares that are totally devoid of any aesthetic quality.
The hooped socks are all wrong, too. Apart from the Rugby League connotations, they look like garments plucked from a rocking-horse in the nursery, or Mary Quant and Bridget Riley on an acid-fuelled trip down the King's Road in 1968.
I don't oppose dropping RRR but it has to be for the right reasons. I feel RRR very much encapsulates our club's qualities very well - open, family-friendly, plenty of history, tradition in a modern era. I do sometimes lament the fact that when we visit other clubs, they have a much more fortress mentality that I feel we need - no visiting club or set of fans will be intimidated by RRR, and if we want to build Fortress Valley, then dropping RRR could be the way forward. It's not everyone's cup of tea but I felt that Wigan set the atmosphere really well with the theme from Gladiator as the opening tune, which is impressive considering their plastic stadium and handful of fans.
I'd like to hear RRR in the pre-match if it is dropped though, preferably as the last song before This is The Valley or the players come on, as it does get some of our fans pumped for the game.
When have you ever been to an away match and started trembling with fear due to the music coming through the tannoy? I doubt visiting players even listen, noise from the stands would be far more intimidating than any music. The fact you think Wigan is a good model on this sums it up.
Fans make an intimidating atmosphere, not music out of the tannoy.
As others have said I have never been intimidated by a song at an away game.
The Valley was considered a fortress for a few years in the early 2000s - it was a fortress because we had a team who felt like they were part of us, and we were competing with (and sometimes beating) some of the most feted teams in the land. We were all in it together, and before the game, they played RRR...
Im another who has never found an away game intimidating at all, let alone because of the music they play.
It is our players on the pitch who will make the Valley intimidating for opposing players if we are destroying teams game after game.
I also really could not care if any other teams fans think it is funny, if anything should be getting mocked from a club (not)in South London, it is Palaces "marketed" atmosphere, not us actually daring to have some heritage unlike our neighbours.
I don't oppose dropping RRR but it has to be for the right reasons. I feel RRR very much encapsulates our club's qualities very well - open, family-friendly, plenty of history, tradition in a modern era. I do sometimes lament the fact that when we visit other clubs, they have a much more fortress mentality that I feel we need - no visiting club or set of fans will be intimidated by RRR, and if we want to build Fortress Valley, then dropping RRR could be the way forward. It's not everyone's cup of tea but I felt that Wigan set the atmosphere really well with the theme from Gladiator as the opening tune, which is impressive considering their plastic stadium and handful of fans.
I'd like to hear RRR in the pre-match if it is dropped though, preferably as the last song before This is The Valley or the players come on, as it does get some of our fans pumped for the game.
When have you ever been to an away match and started trembling with fear due to the music coming through the tannoy? I doubt visiting players even listen, noise from the stands would be far more intimidating than any music. The fact you think Wigan is a good model on this sums it up.
Fans make an intimidating atmosphere, not music out of the tannoy.
You (and the posters who followed you) have taken a lot of what I was saying out of context. If we're going to drop RRR, I would only be in favour if the replacement would achieve something worth dropping RRR for. I'm not going to support doing something just because we've always done it. Also, re your Wigan point, I was implying that the music/entrance of the players was pretty much the only positive of an otherwise laughable pre-match display by Wigan (terrible stadium, no fans, fans don't sing or cheer).
I agree, music isn't going to intimidate anyone (and I never said that it did), but it helps if the music gets people pumped or excited for the game. If you're deaf or hate music then obviously you focus on other things. Also, you highlight that fans are indimidating, not the music, which is correct, except in our case as many posters have pointed out no one is singing along to the RRR anymore, at least not like they were in the Prem days, so opposition fans and both sets of players just see a bunch of glum men with Bovril and blankets whilst some ancient tune about a bird blares out the tannoy. I love RRR but I love it even more when the whole stadium is belting it out. God Save The Queen is just a poem about some old woman until 90000 people are belting it out, then it becomes a National Anthem.
Sounds like an offhand comment about a cheesy tune. The reason I don't sing it is you can't be heard over the tannoy anyway. On the one hand we dont want KM to just give us the corporate schmooze, on the other hand when she voices an opinion we don't like we want to form a picket outside Sparrow Lane and scare the people in the local schools.
- changing our badge - changing our kit colour - changing our name - changing our nickname - changing our stadium's name - building a statue of a dead pop star outside the stadium
* these have all happened at other clubs in the 92
I'm with what most of you are saying. I like the fact they are asking questions. Better than just changing it without asking and at least they are getting involved with us.
I also agree with what some people said that it's not a great song. That said I don't exactly think blowing bubbles is a 'hardcase' song either. BUT when sung by their whole crowd sounds pretty good if I'm honest. It's our job to give people that away feeling. Not some upbeat song.
I never want goal scoring music and pump up songs. It's very american like and cringey. Creative chants and traditional songs for me please.
Someone earlier on this thread made a very good case for having no music at all. For our promotion party against Hartlepool we did have opera divas belting it out from the pitch, but the interludes were noticeably not filled with chain-saw guitars pumped through the tannoy at four million decibels. There was a radio silence that allowed the sounds of the crowd to swell organically in the build-up to kick-off - the oohs and aahs, the excited chatter, the delirium approaching boiling point...
Sure, a promotion party is a long way from 'Uddersfield on a Tuesday night in November - but you get my point that we shouldn't need cajoling, still less battering into dazed submission. The music of "Come on" - blaring out while the ref is waiting patiently for it to cease before he can peep for the kick-off - does seem hollow when we are meant to be demonstrating to the opposition that The Valley is a fortress.
Dear old Dave Lockwood. I liked your sketch of the frantic and haphazard 'arrangements' behind the scenes on match-days, Seth. Do we really need a geezer on the touchline bellowing "GET BEHIND THE BOYS AND MAKE SOME NOISE" as if we are a bunch of recalcitrant ten-year-old schoolchildren?
- changing our badge - changing our kit colour - changing our name - changing our nickname - changing our stadium's name - building a statue of a dead pop star outside the stadium
* these have all happened at other clubs in the 92
- changing our badge - changing our kit colour - changing our name - changing our nickname - changing our stadium's name - building a statue of a dead pop star outside the stadium
* these have all happened at other clubs in the 92
Give it time... ;-)
Number two has already happened, hasn't it? (Not their doing, I know...). ;-)
Comments
FWIW Roland doesn't strike me as some power mad loony like other owners and I can't believe that having dipped their toes in the water now they would even dream of pushing this through. The Red Robin lives to tweet on I reckon.
However, rather like Kensell's Crossbars nonsense, she's asked the question, been told the answer and that should be an end to it.
She's a CEO at a football club not the European Commission so she doesn't need to carry on asking the same thing again until she gets the "right" answer.
As others have intimated above the Red, Red Robin (RRR), naff as some perceive it, unites Charlton fans past and present alive or dead.
She and the other bloke, Kensell, prattle on about "match day experience." I strongly suspect that phrase is marketing bullshit for "how do we get more money from the 'customers' " but if she is sincere then she should realise or swiftly learn that football is an emotional experience and there are few things more emotional than uniting the generations even if that emotion does not manifest itself overtly and demonstrably.
Yes it may look like fans are indifferent to RRR sometimes but that is because over many years it has become part of the fabric and what we are. It doesn't need acknowledging all the time because it's "there" and part of us.
Last season I was there for an event which was going to be on the pitch pre-match, but then it became a half time thing, it involved a great deal of standing around while one person was waiting for, or checking with another person, and involved a fair amount of shrugging, without anybody seemingly knowing just what was supposed to be happening. Of course as always people muddle through, even if they are muttering as they do.
Do we need a matchday 'script' known to everybody, which reigns supreme over the event and which all participants is in thrall to, and uses as a definitive guide?
I have seen in our museum archives the board memo in the 60's to push forward the decision that our nickname would become "The Red Devils"....thankfully it never happened and during those Selhurst days the short lived "Valiants" moniker was returned to "The Addicks" as it had been since 1907/8 when it first appeared.
Our club could almost copyright five elements as a key component of its identity they are that strong;
i - The Valley
ii - The Red Red Robin
iii - "The Addicks" as a nickname
iv - Watt Tylers Sword as a club badge
v - as a follower of the above, retaining the right to whinge about anything and everything.
**footnote were not alone with suggested change http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/football/28261889
I'd like to hear RRR in the pre-match if it is dropped though, preferably as the last song before This is The Valley or the players come on, as it does get some of our fans pumped for the game.
If clubs or fans on their behalf registered their 'heritage' what would it consist of and what would it be for Charlton, and what if fans had a veto on such changes enshrined in the rules somehow, and of course how could it be implemented or enforced, finally does it have any value?
And look at our 'third' kit - that horrendous synthetic confection of sherbet yellow blending into fizzy orange, like the wet dream of a six-year-old child with attention-deficit disorder, high on toxic e-numbers. What gets me is that design consultants are paid an absolute fortune to come up with these nightmares that are totally devoid of any aesthetic quality.
The hooped socks are all wrong, too. Apart from the Rugby League connotations, they look like garments plucked from a rocking-horse in the nursery, or Mary Quant and Bridget Riley on an acid-fuelled trip down the King's Road in 1968.
; - )
I'm not loud - you guys are just quiet
Fans make an intimidating atmosphere, not music out of the tannoy.
The Valley was considered a fortress for a few years in the early 2000s - it was a fortress because we had a team who felt like they were part of us, and we were competing with (and sometimes beating) some of the most feted teams in the land. We were all in it together, and before the game, they played RRR...
It is our players on the pitch who will make the Valley intimidating for opposing players if we are destroying teams game after game.
I also really could not care if any other teams fans think it is funny, if anything should be getting mocked from a club (not)in South London, it is Palaces "marketed" atmosphere, not us actually daring to have some heritage unlike our neighbours.
I agree, music isn't going to intimidate anyone (and I never said that it did), but it helps if the music gets people pumped or excited for the game. If you're deaf or hate music then obviously you focus on other things. Also, you highlight that fans are indimidating, not the music, which is correct, except in our case as many posters have pointed out no one is singing along to the RRR anymore, at least not like they were in the Prem days, so opposition fans and both sets of players just see a bunch of glum men with Bovril and blankets whilst some ancient tune about a bird blares out the tannoy. I love RRR but I love it even more when the whole stadium is belting it out. God Save The Queen is just a poem about some old woman until 90000 people are belting it out, then it becomes a National Anthem.
- changing our badge
- changing our kit colour
- changing our name
- changing our nickname
- changing our stadium's name
- building a statue of a dead pop star outside the stadium
* these have all happened at other clubs in the 92
Only know the opening line and the wake up bit....
I also agree with what some people said that it's not a great song. That said I don't exactly think blowing bubbles is a 'hardcase' song either. BUT when sung by their whole crowd sounds pretty good if I'm honest. It's our job to give people that away feeling. Not some upbeat song.
I never want goal scoring music and pump up songs. It's very american like and cringey. Creative chants and traditional songs for me please.
Sure, a promotion party is a long way from 'Uddersfield on a Tuesday night in November - but you get my point that we shouldn't need cajoling, still less battering into dazed submission. The music of "Come on" - blaring out while the ref is waiting patiently for it to cease before he can peep for the kick-off - does seem hollow when we are meant to be demonstrating to the opposition that The Valley is a fortress.
Dear old Dave Lockwood. I liked your sketch of the frantic and haphazard 'arrangements' behind the scenes on match-days, Seth. Do we really need a geezer on the touchline bellowing "GET BEHIND THE BOYS AND MAKE SOME NOISE" as if we are a bunch of recalcitrant ten-year-old schoolchildren?