Starting To Believe?

I was away for the weekend in Bristol for a jolly with friends. But I’m pleased to say that, thanks to the kindness of the bar lady in the Sportsmans bar I was settled in front of a large TV with a glass of red in plenty of time to enjoy Small’s peach of a cross and Godden’s superb run and header. Several celebratory glasses later I was able, like all other Addicks, to settle back and appreciate what was without question an outstanding performance, from start to finish, in all departments.

I can’t remember a game in which we won such a high percentage of contested balls (leaving aside the dreadful challenge on Ramsay in the first half, which was surely a borderline red never mind a foul), or so many aerial contests at the back. At the same time we had weapons going forward, most obviously Campbell, that Huddersfield were utterly unable to deal with. I’ve seen the comments from Huddersfield fans bemoaning their display, but we simply never gave them a sniff. Towards the end we were hoping for the clean sheet to be maintained, not so much for goal difference and the accumulated total but rather because our display deserved to be written of in terms of such an emphatic scoreline.

No doubt there were several factors behind why it was so good. Jones will have demanded a response after Peterborough and the players gave him that. Perhaps we caught Huddersfield on a bad day (their form looks patchy of late). And no question it helps when you take the lead with a superb goal in the first minute.

The irony of course is that the day overall saw our chances of automatic promotion further eroded as another round of games was chalked off with no narrowing of the gap to Wycombe and Wrexham. Nothing as yet we can do about that. And it’s not as if tonight’s fixtures on paper raise our hopes. We travel to Mansfield, who may be starting to think about their summer holidays but have won their last two and only lost one in their last six, while Wrexham are at Cambridge and Wycombe host Shrewsbury, with both opponents some way adrift of safety at the bottom and perhaps starting to prepare for League Two.

But this is football, of course you never know. We can only concentrate on maintaining the standard on display on Saturday and keeping our fingers crossed for the other games, keeping the fact that we still have to play both Wycombe and Wrexham in the back of our minds. Would be nice for Stockport to fall away to give us more breathing space, but they are at home to Stevenage, who have lost two and drawn two of their last four.

All that aside, we can still take heart from Saturday. I remember the 1997/98 season. It was in March when we beat Notts Forest 4-2 at The Valley, having previously tonked them in the FA Cup, that I think we really started to believe. We all know what happened at the end of that one.