The 50th edition of The Blizzard is on sale now, and we have an exclusive discount code to share with SAFC fans! Use the code 'ALS3' for £3 off the print version, or 'ALS1' for £1 off the digital version. To celebrate the landmark 50th edition, here is a snippet from issue 49 where Declan Warrington discusses that famous Charlton play-off final. Issue 49 is still on sale and can also be purchased using THIS LINK.
Perhaps the greatest game ever played at the old Wembley Stadium unfolded in intense heat late in the spring of 1998. Charlton, after recording nine successive clean sheets, were pursuing an unlikely promotion to the Premier League less than six years after they had been homeless.
Sunderland – desperate to deliver, for the first time, Premier League football to the recently opened Stadium of Light – were their opponents and, led by the proven quality of Niall Quinn and Lee Clark and the undoubted promise of Kevin Phillips and Michael Gray, were largely expected to deny them.
That Charlton had returned to the Valley in 1992 had contributed so much to their transformation into contenders for promotion. They had invested a club-record fee in Clive Mendonca – a supporter of none other than Sunderland and school friend of Gray – and been rewarded by his 25 goals leading them to fourth place and Wembley, and yet the fact that Saša Ilić, making his 17th professional appearance after arriving as a trialist from non-league football, was their goalkeeper was a demonstration of their relative financial constraints.
Their manager Alan Curbishley, a popular former Charlton player who had first been joint-manager with Steve Gritt when the club played its home fixtures at Upton Park, was also a long-term colleague and friend of Peter Reid. Reid, whose faith in the previously little-known Phillips had led to the recruitment of one of Sunderland’s finest ever players, had 12 months earlier overseen their relegation from the Premier League with a total of 40 points in their last ever season at Roker Park. A solitary point had also just kept them from second place, and automatic promotion.
Clive Mendonca: I’m a Sunderland lad. I was born in London, but moved to Sunderland when I was two, and was brought up in Sunderland. Went to school in Sunderland, played for Sunderland Boys, Durham County, had been a Sunderland fan all me life. Every team I’ve played for, the first result I looked for is Sunderland. Me mates are Sunderland. Everything I know is Sunderland. Imagine being brought up like that, and you had to play against your team at Wembley in the final of the play-offs. It’s horrible, really. Honestly. It is. Really, I’d wanted to sign for Sunderland. I come down to Charlton, spoke to [Alan] Curbishley; was really happy with what he’d said. I’d heard Sunderland wanted to sign us, so I said to Curbs, “I think Sunderland want to sign us; if it doesn’t happen, I’ll sign with you.” Didn’t happen. “I’ve got to look after myself; they really want us, I’m going to Charlton.” At the time I was the record signing [for Charlton] - £700,000.
Alan Curbishley: When he came into the building, it was the first time we’d signed anyone for [significant] money, and it made a big difference in the dressing room. He made a big difference to the way we played.
Mark Kinsella: We knew we had a goalscorer on our hands, but [Nottingham] Forest, Middlesbrough, Sunderland, Ipswich – there was a lot of clubs vying for promotion. Everyone had that ambition, but we never thought that until maybe Christmas, when you’re still in the hunt, and Easter, and you’re still in the hunt – then you have a chance. We just went under the radar a lot that season, until we went on a run, and started to creep into the top six. People then started to take notice, and then it was a matter of where you finished and who you played in the play-offs.
Saša Ilić: I’d asked Charlton for a trial. I was playing for a non-league club, St Leonards Stamcroft, in East Sussex, and I was studying PE and sports science at Brighton University. One of the players was friendly with one of Charlton’s directors, Mike Stevens, and he put me in contact, and Mike organised for me to go for a trial. They kept asking me to come back. After two or three months they started paying for my travel expenses – I’d been sleeping in Putney at my sister’s place on the couch, which was about a metre too short. It took me about two hours to get to training. I started playing for the reserve team. It wasn’t until Bournemouth offered me a contract – that was what instigated Charlton to offer me a contract until the end of the season. It wasn’t much, but they were offering me something to keep me and to keep training with them. I was over the moon; I was fulfilling my childhood dreams just by being at Charlton, let alone playing for the first team. I didn’t expect, in a million years, to be playing at Wembley.
Niall Quinn: We had a very bad start to the season, and we found our feet, and so trying to peg back [second-placed] Middlesbrough was my abiding memory. I think it might have been their second last game. They went a goal down and it did put us into the automatic [promotion] position. Alan Brazil was doing the commentary late on in the game. Boro got a goal. It knocked us back into the play-offs, and I went behind the couch and kicked the couch and put my head on the couch. And Alan Brazil went, “The Sunderland players watching this – I bet they jumped behind the couch.” I couldn’t believe what he said. “Jesus Christ. Is there a camera on me or something?” That’s a memory that I have of that run in.
CM: [Play-off semi-final opponents] Ipswich were a good team. We went to their place but I was struggling with me back. I missed the second leg, and I’ve never, ever been so nervous watching a game of football. We beat them 1-0 – Newts [Shaun Newton] scored a worldie – and I just knew we were playing Sunderland [in the final]. I just absolutely knew it.
Danny Mills: It was never a red card [Mills was sent off in the away leg at Ipswich, which Charlton also won 1-0, after a second booking]. I went to block a ball; Mauricio Taricco, blatant dive; jumped; screamed. After the game there was an incident in the players’ lounge between
him and [the on-loan] Neil Heaney, and Taricco ended up with his nose put across his face and had to wear a mask in the second game. You’re sat in the crowd [during the home leg] thinking, “Just get over the line, to the final.” The manager had said, “You’ll miss this but you’ll be back in the final to play.”
NQ: When you end up in the play-off spot, you look at your first task and that was Sheffield United. Ipswich were a bit of a bogey team for us. But we kind of feared Charlton because we had had tough games against them [0-0 and 1-1 draws that season].
DM: We had a really long break of 12 days, and all that time to wait until Wembley. I had my 21st birthday then as well – I went for an evening meal in a pub somewhere in Kent and had a lemonade. The game was far more important.
Kevin Ball: We were very fortunate to have a fantastic manager in the gaffer, Peter Reid, but also a great coach in Bobby Saxton, and we would have been so trusting in what they wanted us to do. They gave us time off, and I think that was the most important thing. So that by the time it came to the final, we weren’t drained. You give a footballer time off, it’s like he’s won the lottery. He knew how long to give us – what to do so that by the time we got to the final we were all ready and raring.
To read the full article, check out The Blizzard 49 - and for issue 50 don't forget to use the aforementioned discount codes...
