Trouble at t'Millwall - but nobody at Charlton seems to want to take any responsibility

It is nearly 20 years since Elton John performed at The Valley, but one of his most recognisable refrains appears to have been adopted in the SE7 boardroom, where “sorry seems to be the hardest word”.

The club’s owners might reasonably argue they don’t have much to apologise for, having invested significantly in the squad over the summer to give Charlton a fighting chance of competing in the Championship.

Various off-field improvements, the latest of which include the addition of handgrips on the steep steps of the 31-year-old Alan Curbishley Stand, with a new improved big screen promised for the next home game against Blackburn Rovers, cannot be ignored either.

In other words, the club has credit in the bank with fans for the first time in a while.

All of which makes it puzzling that the management team feels the need to go to ground when things go wrong. Fans’ frustration over the ham-fisted online sale of play-off semi-final tickets last May was simply ignored by the club, while hopes of extra final tickets in Wembley were allowed to die with no explanation of what was happening.

Now we have the debacle of the post-match arrangements for last Saturday’s renewal of the unfriendly rivalry with Millwall, over which it took four days and detailed enquiries from both the supporters’ trust and reporter Rich Cawley to drag out any response at all.

It should be acknowledged from the outset that the police were the major villains of this piece and at least one of their answers to Cawley about the routing arrangements they imposed on Charlton fans is disingenuous at best.

Having diverted perhaps as many as 10,000 home fans down narrow and heavily parked Charlton Lane and over a level crossing, where they ran into oncoming traffic, a police spokesperson claimed to Cawley that traffic management there was down to the club.

This is categorically untrue, as the club has no matchday jurisdiction beyond longstanding traffic orders covering Floyd Road, Harvey Gardens and Valley Grove. The Met, in my view both created a safety hazard and failed to mitigate it. They then disclaimed responsibility.

The police, who confirmed to Cawley that they had a mammoth 295 officers on duty, had also advertised that special provision would be made for home supporters unable to navigate the extended route back to the station to use the Ransom Walk railway underpass and then, at least initially, they assertively blocked them from using it.

Thousands of home fans exited The Valley with no idea of what was happening because, for reasons known only to the club hierarchy, Charlton had made no effort to tell them, other than adding a link to the police’s own Friday lunchtime message at the foot of a website preview and a late and barely audible tannoy announcement on the day.

This was in significant contrast to Millwall, who effectively communicated the post-match plan to their supporters via their own social media, despite the fact that the disruption for their fans was minimal.

The upshot was mass confusion in Harvey Gardens, with thousands heading for a route home that they weren’t allowed to use and thousands more stranded at the back of the west stand, including on the stairways used to leave the upper tier, because the single gate open on to Harvey Gardens was already blocked by fans trapped in the congestion outside.

Meanwhile, a mob of Millwall fans burst through the lightly guarded emergency exit to the Jimmy Seed Stand to confront – and in some cases assault – Charlton fans as they left via the Sam Bartram gate after the 1-1 draw, sparking an alarmed retreat by family groups and elderly supporters.

The home cliub’s response, when it finally came, was both pitiful and anonymous, suggesting perhaps that those responsible had spent the week to date hiding under the boardroom table. Even then, the club decided not to share its version via its own channels.

“We recognise that a number of incidents negatively affected the matchday experience for some supporters, which is never something we want to see,” it wittered. “As you know, the experience of supporters at our games is very important to us.” 

“We have received around 35 direct emails from supporters regarding the game, notably fewer than the number we received after our opening match of the season against Watford”, it claimed, as if the issues equated to catering inadequacies rather than people being punched in the face or put at risk of being trampled by police horses. 

The club also pointed to the highest crowd for the fixture in 50 years, a bit over 23,000, when it was all of 1,200 higher than the previous home fixture against Leicester City and therefore hardly a material consideration. There had been 19,000 for the Millwall game back in 2009.

What the response didn’t offer was any suggestion that the club and therefore its management had got anything wrong at all, which perhaps is fine unless the directors really want supporters to believe that “the experience of supporters at our games is very important to us”.

Indeed, the club claimed that “it is encouraging any issues which did occur were isolated and dealt with swiftly”, entirely ignoring the confusion to which it had contributed outside the ground as a significant problem. To add insult to injury it then pointed fans to a matchday survey unlrelated to events and obviously assembled for marketing purposes.

There is no doubt that many of the issues at The Valley last weekend were caused by the police, who make all the strategic decisions. They will point to the low number of matchday arrests (two) or confrontations with Millwall fans outside as evidence that they did the right thing in allowing them immediate and unfettered access to Floyd Road and the station after the game. However, the situation they created for home fans did not appear safe.

Most people, including me, give the owners credit for an improving picture in SE7, but they need to note the lack of leadership behind the scenes and should find the failure of senior staff to step up when things go wrong disturbing.

It’s in these moments that we see who the people running the club on a day-to-day basis really are – or would, if they came out of hiding.

Rick Everitt