On a freezing December day local rivals Charlton and Millwall took to the field in a league one battle which had been 13 years in the waiting.
Both sides took to the field sporting Charlton’s Street violence ruins lives campaign logo to a Valley cauldron expecting to see a fierce encounter.
It was the visitors that started strongest, controlling most of the possession and making the Addicks struggle to take control of the game. A task that was made even harder as on 12 minutes, Scott Wagstaff and Sam Sodje managed to get into each others way just outside of the Charlton box, allowing Steve Morison to capitalise on the defensive madness and score.
Charlton continues to struggle throughout the first half hour and things were made worse after 27 minutes as the referee awarded the Lions a phantom corner, the ball in bounced around and was struck onto the post only to bounce away and hit Nicky Bailey in the gut, as the skipper tried to react and clear the ball Morison simply got his foot to the ball first and took the game to 2 -0.
Charlton had their work cut out, but thankfully faced some poor defending from the Lions; David Mooney was played clean through on goal on 31 minutes only to be bought down by the last man. Inexplicably, no card was shown for the straight red challenge, but the penalty was awarded and Deon Burton promptly converted.
7 minutes later and the Addicks had another penalty. David Mooney again showing the sort of attacking effort that should get him a full contract with Charlton, before his shot came off the post and landed at Lloyd Sam’s feet, Sam wound back ready to shoot, only for Nadjim Abdou to fly in and take out the winger, another penalty, only this time the referee made up for his earlier mistake and produced the red card. Burton was again handed the spot kick, and again made it look easy.
Half time 2- 2
The 2nd half began with Charlton looking like the side we’ve seen at The Valley all season, and this new energy paid off immediately with Nicky Bailey scoring a wonder goal from the edge of the box straight after kick off.
The Addicks nearly made it 4 -2 minutes later, but somehow David Forde managed to stop Deon Burton’s header going over the line.
Charlton continued to pressurize for a bit but then decided to invite pressure on to them, the 10 – man Lions, responded by scoring on the 80th minute thanks to shear tenacity.
The Addicks staged a brief fight back but didn’t really look like scoring until the 84th minute as Steve Morison got his third goal of the game, unfortunately for him however, it was an own goal and the Addicks had the lead once again.
Millwall refused to give up though and scored the equaliser in the 91st minute, as Danny Schofield took the ball past a tired looking Christian Dailly and fired the ball into the net.
So a 4 -4 draw was the final result, as the Addicks go onto Boxing Day hoping that the weather will be slightly warmer, and that the fantastic form shown in the first half of the League One season can continue.