Saturday 3 March 2012

Daylight Robbery.

AFC Bournemouth 0 - Charlton Athletic 1.


With so many 'exes' on the pitch today, (Wiggins, Hollands, Francis and Arter), it was perhaps fitting that a bloke who has become famous for being shafted by his ex wives should be sitting in the crowd.

I'm not really a fan of Jim Davidson but there were many people who were plainly thrilled to see him sitting among the Addicks.

Davidson didn't pick a very good game to 'keep it real' with his South London roots.

The first half was probably shaded by the home side as they managed to hit the outside of Ben Hamer's post but really there was very little quality on show.

Charlton were playing like they were shattered.
Possibly the exertions of last weekend against Stevenage and the midweek thumping of Chesterfield had numbed the team a little.

Whatever the reason, the midfield never really got going and BWP up front was off the pace.

The atmosphere was completely flat too.
Through no fault of their own, the Bournemouth support were finding little to shout about and the Charlton support were finding the majority of their noise was being blown out of the ground, due to being so close to the 'empty' end of the 3 sided stadium.

Within 5 minutes of the restart, the game had already given more excitement than the first half.

BWP let a ball run through his legs instead of giving it a smack into the net, hoping it would run to a team mate.
Unfortunately nobody materialised.
There were also two rocket shots that looked to be certain goals in a bit of a scramble. The Bournemouth defence held strong.

With 20 minutes to go, Hamer seemed to turn his ankle and hopped around after taking a goal kick.
He eventually sat down and was replaced by Sullivan.

As the clock ticked towards 90 minutes, Arter found space and for all the world looked to have stuck the ball in the far corner of the goal.
From a Bournemouth perspective, the ball went agonisingly close. That was to be it as far as the Cherries were concerned.

Haynes had replaced BWP, surely with the intention of running at a tiring Simon Francis, and the Charlton attack suddenly had the pace that had been lacking.

We had all settled for an honourable point, (which would have been a fair result on the balance of play), when Charlton won a corner in the second minute of added on time.

Green floated one in and Kermorgant made connection.
Jackson seemed to wave his leg at the ball and the added movement caught the eye of the defence.
The ball crossed the line and suddenly all eyes were on the linesman.
Had he seen what we had seen?

Evidently he had, as he signalled the goal and we went nuts.

Winning after controlling the game is one thing but winning when you've been decidedly average is a delicious feeling.

Half of one stand and a quarter of another became a sea of bouncing joy while the rest of the ground quickly started to empty, before the referee finally blew for time.

The footballing gods shone kindly on Charlton today, especially in light of the other League 1 results.

The club have now beaten their away wins record for a season, with every chance the number could be improved on before May.

Most of those 13 away wins were thoroughly deserved but as Davidson might have said, we 'nick nicked' the points this time.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Jim Davidson has been to a few games this season.
Check his blog
http://www.jimdavidson.org.uk/2012/02/23/cafc-blog/

Anonymous said...

I dislike the man but his football credentials are good. Not only is he a known Charlton supporter but was also (ironically, in this instance) a Director at Bournemouth AFC.