Programme of the week number 8 – Charlton Athletic v Derby County 1951/1952
If there was one ground that Derby would have anticipated visiting with great relish at this time, it would have been the vast bowl that was The Valley, home of Charlton Athletic. Since the resumption of League football after the war, Derby had made five visits there and returned home with five victories resulting in an aggregate score of 19-6 in the Rams’ favour. November of 1951 opened with Charlton lying 6th in the table (4 points behind leaders Bolton) but having lost their previous two matches. On the other hand, Derby, though sitting ten places lower at 16th, were on a run of three successive victories (over Spurs, Preston and Burnley).
The design of the 8-page Charlton programme hadn’t changed much over the previous five years and there’s plenty read in the club notes which cover the first three pages (and are quick to mention the 5-in-a-row for Derby as well as the 1946 Cup Final win). The team line-ups, neatly displayed on a green background, cover the centre pages and are surrounded by adverts including for Charringtons beer, Lovell’s toffees (at that point in time Lovell’s Athletic were one of several works teams operating at quite a high level in non-league football), Horlicks (as used by Charlton players, apparently) and a trip on a coach run by C.G.Lewis to the upcoming away game at Villa Park for the princely sum of 8/9d return.
The statistics on pages 6 and 7 include an interesting little article on the club’s recent introduction to floodlights down on the south coast in a friendly at Hastings United. “Here to stay” is the club’s verdict on what was, in 1951, still very much a novelty.
Page 8 has a half-time scoreboard and a weird little advert featuring Tommy Trump advertising Double Ace cigarettes (a packet of 10 costing 1/3d).
The match itself proved to be another high-scoring thriller and, with just 8 minutes remaining and Charlton 3-1 up, they must have thought the Derby hoodoo had finally been broken but goals on 82 minutes from Ray Wilkins and a flying header on 86 minutes from Hugh MacLaren earned Derby a point. The home side had got off to a flying start when, after 3 minutes, centre-forward Charlie Vaughan headed home and that was followed by a second goal on 15 minutes, netted by Chris Duffy. Back came Derby, though and Johnny Morris hit the crossbar before Jack Parry reduced the arrears before the interval. Vaughan then restored Charlton’s 2-goal lead on 52 minutes with his second of the game. Then came those dramatic final eight minutes.
The attendance that day was 26,696 which seems reasonably healthy, however the ground was only a third full as at that point in time The Valley had a capacity of round about 75,000 (with only 7.5% of that being seated). The West terrace was vast and climbing from the bottom of it to the top was quite a test of fitness. I can vouch for that as I tried to do so way back in 1982!