Saturday 25 December 2010

Christmas Greetings

To Addicks everywhere. I started Christmas Day by watching this piece of Charlton nostgalgia: Sam Bartram

It's a good job they didn't have time added on at The Valley on 25 December 1954 otherwise everyone would have been late for their Christmas lunch. 154 stoppages accounted for 28 minutes but we still beat Sheffield Wednesday 3-0 with all goals being scored by Eddie Firmani, the first after two minutes.

There were no matches at Christmas 1962 because of the weather. The match on 19 January against tomorrow's opponents Southampton was started in sub-zero temperatures and was abandoned after 57 minutes because of a snowstorm. One match was played in February and the next in March. The Addicks just escaped relegation from the second tier.

The last Christmas Day match at The Valley was in 1957 when we beat Doncaster Rovers in front of a crowd of 17,417, some 5,000 below average for the season. Christmas Day games were becoming less popular and we played our last away one at Huddersfield the following year.

Trains still ran on Christmas Day in the 1950s and on one notorious occasion Charlton players returning from an away game drank the restaurant car staff under the table.

I can relax this morning as our Erith-born oldest daughter is cooking Christmas lunch at her home in a Warwickshire village. All I have to do is get the car to start and up the icy slope from the garage!

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Happy Christmas Wyn, I tried to catch your eye in the Rose at the Yeovil reunuion of bloggers.

We are at home in Crowborough with my wife's family who all originate from Erith. My mother in law is moaning as I write about no longer being there since she broke her neck 6 years ago and moved to Tunbridge Wells which she calls a dump!

Oh happy families. Hope everyone enjoys the game & festivitiies.

Crowobrough Addick

sm said...

Just heard Neil Warnock reminiscing on the radio about having to play on both Christmas Day and Boxing Day when he was a player. Since he played between 1967 and 1979 looks like Colin was telling porkies yet again!