February 4 2013

Palace v Charlton

Palace notched up a delightful season's double with a 2-1 victory at Selhurst. Jamesey reports with some pleasure.

After a poor midweek performance at Huddersfield (Jan 26), losing 1-0, we were all hoping for a return to something like our top-notch form in the home game against Charlton Athletic (Feb 2).

The acrimony with Charlton has always been rather a mystery to this writer.

Back in the early '80s I actually used to feel quite sorry for the Addicks. A visit to their crumbling ground certainly reminded one of how the mighty can fall - from top-flight club to financially unviable scrabbler.

And when the wheels came off in a big way in the mid-80s and when they found themselves with no Valley at all never mind a happy one, who did they turn to for somewhere to play? Selhurst Park, of course.

This earned all things Crystal Palace their undying hatred although, logically, providing them with a venue might have been a reason for their gratitude.

It always seemed to me that the hatred was very much a one-way affair as most Eagles fans couldn't really see what the problem was. A couple of my Charlton-supporting acquaintances actually stopped speaking to me at the time.

Anyhow to be fair, they pulled themselves up by their bootstraps, built a new stadium through local efforts and got themselves back in the race.

After beating them at the Valley, 1-0, last September at the beginning of our glorious climb to the top of the table, we fielded a different-looking line-up for the return at Selhurst, with a makeshift midfield of Jacob Butterfield, Alex Marrow and Stuart O'Keefe.

A gate of just under 18,000 turned out on a bitterly cold day but the Palace-supporting majority were to be disappointed as Charlton totally overran us in the first period.

Needless to say, Charlton's Ricardo Fuller, who briefly played in an Eagles shirt, capitalised on the inevitable and scored in the 15th minute and, to be honest, we were lucky that that was the only difference when the whistle sounded.

The performance was so bad that the team was booed off the field, a noise I hadn't heard since the most turgidly awful period of Dougie Freedman's reign.

The second half was a totally different matter, with 39-year-old Kevin Phillips starting and Jon Williams joining him a little later. Considering that Phillips is nearly as old as me (only joking, Kev. Honest), he read the game like a master and made an enormous difference.

It was like watching a completely different team and although the Addicks did their best to hang on to their slender lead with blatant time wasting, Glenn Murray (who else?), popped in a couple in the last 15 minutes and that was it, to our unconfined joy.

Incidentally, it is no secret that I have always doubted the point of the Crystal Girls at Selhurst.

When I dared to express any criticism a couple of years ago, I was rebuked by CPFC2010 and roundly abused on the message boards. I also received many PMs and emails expressing full agreement with my views.

That's all history now, but I thought my rheumy old eyes were deceiving me when I saw a second troupe of girls wearing white costumes frolicking on the Selhurst turf.

It turns out that these were cheerleaders from the USA, the Jacksonville Jaguars, over here for reasons which I couldn't really fathom.

Thus we were witness to a double helping of cavorting totty on the field and if that had any influence on our superb second-half performance, bring on the Sacramento Sweethearts as well for the next home fixture...

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