Do You Want To Know A Secret?

The game yesterday was called off.
I know this for certain and just the fact that you are reading this, means you know it too.

Despite the public servants at Euston station refusing to make an announcement to stop Charlton supporters starting a pointless journey, there can't have been many people who didn't know what was happening within ten minutes of the decision up at Spotland.

This got me thinking.
Many years ago, I remember turning up at the Valley for a Saturday afternoon fixture, (possibly against West Ham?), to find out the game had been called off.
This would never happen today.
Social media has changed our lives so much that there can rarely be a case of being able to pass on news without your pal replying that they'd heard it already.

Blogs and other websites take time to update. Contacting radio stations to pass on news will always rely on the person taking the call believing the information is worth broadcasting.

Yesterday, the official CAFC twitter reported what had happened instantly and set off a chain of events, no doubt involving personal twitter accounts, SMS texts and emails pinging around the country into peoples pockets.

There might even have been a few 'old school' fans who made one of those 'telephone calls' to their friends, (surely only a few weeks away from a How We Used To Live programme on BBC4.)
The game being off at Rochdale was already old news within 30 minutes.

Well done to everyone, both at Charlton and Rochdale for releasing the information so swiftly.

Yes, there were many, many people who were already on their way North and had to turn around.
Some fans who had stayed over on Friday night were already there.

However, I'd bet there were very, very few people who walked up at 2:30pm expecting to see Rochdale play Charlton.