Accrington Stanley 2 Charlton Athletic 2 (League One, Saturday 30th July 2022)
Well, seeing as one of the general themes of this blog is a "where are they now?" section on clubs who went out of the league, it seems apt that we're starting with a trip to arguably the most infamous one of them all, Accrington Stanley (cue the Scouse kids from the '80s milk adverts - "'oo are they?" "Exaccccctly.")
The plan was simple - when I moved away from London a couple of years ago, I'd agreed with one of my former bandmates down there, a die-hard Charlton fan, that if the Addicks had any away fixtures nearby then he was welcome to come up and visit. Of course, with the number of Yorkshire clubs in League One these days exclusively confined to the mythical South Riding (Barnsley and Sheffield Wednesday, both of which are a bit of a trek from Bradford - Barnsley because it's on the slow train route to Sheffield and Wednesday because it takes half an hour on the tram from Sheffield city centre even once you've got there), this seemed a bit of a remote prospect but Accrington on the first day was deemed to be just about near enough and so off we went.
One thing about the Bradford to Blackpool line is that almost every stop on it has a football club nearby (Halifax, Burnley, Accrington, Blackburn, Preston and Blackpool itself) so perhaps unsurprisingly the train out was a mixture of home and away fans heading up to Ewood Park to see Blackburn play QPR or Bloomfield Road to see Blackpool take on Reading plus the usual group of people off for a Saturday night getting absolutely paralytic on the Golden Mile meaning it wasn't exactly a quiet journey. Ah well, welcome to the new season Andy.
Once it's left Halifax, the train winds its way up Calderdale through Sowerby Bridge (home of a few nice pubs) and Hebden Bridge (home to a weird mix of hippy types and townies, former home of both Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath and Jon Richardson and Lucy Beaumont and the town with the highest percentage of lesbians among its population in the UK - make of that lot what you will), you get to what can best be described as the borderlands - the two or three mile boundary that seems to switch between Yorkshire and Lancashire every time some government bureaucrat decides to try and do a bit of gerrymandering to stop whichever party they belong to losing the next election. Todmorden, the stop after Hebden Bridge, is traditionally a Yorkshire town but during one boundary review in the 1970s they attempted to move it across to Lancs. Urban legend has it that when the "Welcome to Todmorden Lancashire" sign was put up, it was quickly obliterated by a less than impressed local wielding a shotgun and the boundary was quickly moved back to where it was.
Todmorden isn't quite the last bastion of civilisation before you cross the Pennines, the mist rolls in and the rain starts (as indeed it did on the day), as the train climbs the hill out of the town, you go through a small town at the top of the mountains, very much the last Yorkshire outpost before you cross the border and possibly the most inappropriately monikered place you're likely to find around here. Its name? Portsmouth. Even Wikipedia seems at a loss to explain why it's called that. Certainly it's about as far away from the sea as you could possibly imagine (even the nearest river has to be a good three miles away at least) and it bears absolutely no resemblance at all to its more famous south coast namesake (I'll leave it up to you to decide whether that's a good or bad thing). There's been a campaign to bring back a station to Portsmouth (Yorks) for a fair few years now and I for one hope it succeeds. Just for the sheer look of confusion it's likely to produce in any away fans heading to the clubs around here passing through...
We ended up deposited in Accrington with about an hour and a half to kick-off with the endless rows of mill cottages stretching out up the hill before us as we exited the station - it's no wonder Mark E Smith sang "He came from Accrington/He came from Hovis land" about the place. It would be my first visit to the stadium since I saw Pools win there 1-0 in late 2006. At the time, we'd just been relegated to League Two after Martin Scott's disastrous reign as manager which saw him inherit a team that had made it to within ten minutes of the Championship the year before and with the aid of a truly disastrous bunch of signings (Chris Llewellyn, Lee Bullock, Darren Williams, Michael Proctor etc) which suggested that Scotty very much had the mentality of a kid in a sweet shop when it came to strengthening his team, managed to send us back down to the fourth tier just twelve months later. By the time the next campaign kicked off, Scott was thankfully long gone, we'd got a new manager in Danny Wilson who, shock horror, actually seemed to know what he was doing and Pools would make sure their spell in the bottom flight was a short one with us getting promoted straight back to League One the following May.
Accrington, I suspect, were just happy to be there at that point. 2006 saw them returning to the football league after 44 years away. In fact, as early as twelve years before that I'd seen them play against Guiseley at Nethermoor in the Northern Premier League. I remember the programme that day having a column by a journalist for the local paper who'd detailed the Lions' away trip to Stanley earlier in the season and, not being sure where the ground was, ended up asking an old bloke with a flat cap and whippet who he saw walking down the street. The guy's response apparently was "Nay lad, tha's thirty years too late."
Accrington's first spell in the league was pretty much a non-stop story of underachievement. Although the original Accrington FC (they would later merge with another club from the town, Stanley Villa, to gain their more unique name) were founder members of the League, they would only stay there for four years before being voted out. The new version, Accrington Stanley, would return in 1921 but their time in there would be an unremitting struggle with the club only finishing in the top half of Division 3 (North) a handful of times. The splitting of the leagues in the late 1950s however coincided with a sudden upturn in the club's form and they would end up on the right side of the line to be put in the new Division 3 in 1958 after a run of four Top 5 finishes.
It didn't last. The club's first season in the new third tier saw them struggle before finishing bottom of the division in 1960 and be relegated to Division 4. Two years later, the club would resign from the league midway through the 1961-62 season due to financial difficulties to be replaced by Oxford United. After four years in the Lancashire Combination League, the death knell was finally sounded in 1966.
The club would reform at the end of the '60s and by the time I saw them play Guiseley twenty five or so years later, had clawed their way back up to the Northern Premier League, then two divisions below the Football League. However, they would end up leaving the division downwards after being relegated in 1999 after selling their star striker Brett Ormerod to Blackpool for £50,000. However, the aftermath of that transfer would eventually more than undo the damage - Stanley had insisted on a 25% sell on clause and soon afterwards after banging in the goals for the Tangerines, Ormerod would move on to Southampton for £1.75 million netting Accrington over £400,000 - pretty much a king's ransom for that level. The money was invested wisely - Stanley would return to the NPL Premier Division at the first attempt, move up to the Conference three years later and win it to return to the Football League in 2006. Stanley fans would note with satisfaction that the relegated club who they would replace in League Two would be Oxford United, the same team who had ousted them 44 years before.
The first decade or so would see Stanley revert to type, mainly finishing in the bottom half of the fourth tier. John Coleman, the manager who'd masterminded their rise up the divisions, would leave for Rochdale but his spell there was an unsuccessful one and three years later he would be back at Stanley after being sacked following Dale's relegation (the club would have gone through three managers in the interim including future Ipswich and Portsmouth boss Paul Cook and former England striker James Beattie). The big surprise came in 2018 when Stanley confounded their usual position as relegation favourites to seal promotion to League One. Even more surprisingly, they've managed to stabilise in the third tier since including mounting a play-off challenge in 2020-21 which ultimately foundered due to a poor late season run. The club had finished 16th the season just gone but with top scorer Colby Bishop snapped up by Portsmouth (the south coast one - maybe his geography wasn't too good and he thought he was just heading up the road?), the general consensus among the pundits was that a season of struggle was in store.
Charlton were coming into the 2022-23 season from pretty much the opposite angle. A Premiership side 15 years ago, the club had been on a downward spiral ever since. The appointment of local lad done good Lee Bowyer as manager had given the Addicks hope after he'd guided them to promotion in 2019 but the departure of top scorer Lyle Taylor just before the run-in post-Covid had seen them slump from a situation where they'd looked to have their destiny in their own hands to being relegated straight back down to League One. Since then, the club had been treading water with two mid-table finishes and with a new manager in Ben Garner, fresh from leading Swindon's play-off charge the season before, the pressure was on for them to make more of an impression this time out.
We would grab a quick pint at the Crown pub (or rather the beer stall they'd set up in the car park), just round the back of the Crown Ground, before the game. Looking at the stadium, it's pretty clear that Accrington have at least done a bit of work on it in the last 16 years with one new stand and the others having had at least a bit of a refurb. Although obviously the away stand is still an open terrace subject to the elements - just what you want on a rainy day! (which, let's be honest, is most days in Lancashire). Luckily, our tickets were valid for the covered seating area as well so we took full advantage.
Despite the ground improvements, attendances at the Crown Ground are still pretty poor - the visit of Charlton saw a 2500 crowd, a third of whom had journeyed up from South London. I suppose when you've got two decent sized Championship sides, Burnley and Blackburn, either side of you it's always going to be a bit difficult to get the fans in. As a Hartlepool fan who's often given to muttering darkly about fair weather supporters drifting off to watch Middlesbrough and Sunderland, I can sympathise.
Charlton started the game much the stronger team and deservedly took the lead ten minutes before half time when a break saw their attacking midfielder Fraser slot home. There seemed to be a bit of unease among the away fans though that they hadn't put the game out of sight by the interval given that they'd looked menacing going forward with masked fullback Clare and winger Jaiyseimi both looking dangerous. Accrington on the other hand had only threatened a few times in the opening stages of the game but the Charlton defence hadn't looked as solid as they should've done in dealing with the attacks when they happened with their new keeper Wollacott (who'd followed Garner from Swindon) pulling off a couple of decent saves but looking decidedly uncomfortable at dealing with crosses.
The fears were justified - after the break, Stanley stepped it up a gear, Charlton sat back and the inevitable equaliser came when Stanley winger McConville (the home team's best player on the day) took advantage of some good midfield work to slot home a through ball. Both teams were attacking now and with six minutes injury time, it looked as if it could go either way.
In the end, we got a double suckerpunch. Two minutes into injury time, a counter attack saw the Charlton forward line swarm into the area and 18-year-old debutant Miles Leaburn, son of '90s Charlton great Carl, was on hand to turn a cross home. The away support went absolutely bananas with the fans jumping up on to the barriers and digging the Leaburn chants they'd not had a chance to use in a good couple of decades out of storage.
Which was then followed by Accrington going straight up the end and scoring an equaliser. Obviously. It's the sort of spectacular shooting yourself in the foot strategy that brought back a lot of memories of Hartlepool teams past. To be fair, a draw was probably a fair result - Charlton had looked very much the better side in the first half but Accrington were probably the stronger team in the second and their comeback very much epitomised the never say die attitude that's been probably the key factor in their rise from the ashes. I suspect that if they keep playing with that attitude all season then there's no reason why they shouldn't be able to manage another season of mid-table safety in League One. Bizarrely then it makes Accrington a bit of a unique case - a club who went out of the league, returned and have managed to actually go on to greater heights than their original incarnation ever managed. Fair play to them.
Walking back to Accrington station, I decided to check how Pools had got on in Paul Hartley's first game in charge away to Walsall. Fuck. We'd got stuffed 4-0 with Danny Johnson, a former youth player at the Vic, scoring a hat-trick against us. Suddenly it looked ominously like it was going to be a very long season...
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