Ten Years Ago: sunburnt end to the season

It was a blazing hot 7th May 1995 when Charlton went to play Reading at the old Elm Park ground and I got sunburnt. The match was shown live on television: somewhere I still have the video tape, but I haven't bothered to watch it again! Colin Cameron records that the Charlton side had an average age of 22 years, 5 months, 16 days and was the youngest side ever fielded by the club for a first team match.

My notes state, 'We started badly as usual and Reading scored an early goal. Leaburn later had one of his famous misses. Having Petterson in goal didn't help. As usual our player improved substantially in the second half and Chandler equalised. But the Reading crowd having been silenced, their team scored three minutes from the end. This caused a pitch invasion. At the end some of our supporters got on the pitch and the mounted police were brought in.'

As we left, one person was saying we needed a new manager to motivate the players. It was ever thus.