Charlton Athletic - 2 (Salako 13. Pringle 14.)
Crystal Palace - 1 (Martin 2.)

With Charlton in a position that the Palace faithful could only envy, and the home side needing to turn around a poor patch of form of late, this was always going to be a hard fixture for Steve Coppell's squad. That the match started so dramatically can only be a plus for the side, and though the finishing was generally poor (from both sides), it gives us food for thought when we can manage to get some of our strike force back. That this performance was achieved on the back of a solitary striker, Wayne Carlisle, who went into the match injured and a fine performance once again from Fraser Digby in goal was certainly a pointer of better things to come.

A free kick won by Martin in only the first minute of the game was taken by Craig Foster. His cross was weighted perfectly for Martin to head home past Dean Kiely, and much to everyone's surprise we were ahead. The situation was not maintained for too long though, as just 10 minutes later Mark Kinsela sent a through pass to Andy Hunt, whose rocket-like shot was well parried by Digby. Unfortunately the ball fell nicely for John Salako to simply tap home, and our old problem with our "old boys" was back to haunt us once again.

As if this was not bad enough just one minute later a Steve Brown cross from out wide on the right was met first time by Martin Pringle, who made no mistake putting the ball in the back of the net to give the Addicks the lead for the first time in the match. All Charlton now needed was a third goal to really kill off the opposition, but to Palace's credit they never gave up fighting, and indeed never allowed them that third goal.

The only other real chances of the half both fell to Palace with Martin narrowly failing to put in his second and Simon Rodger just managing to head wide.

The first half was over - it remained to be seen what the second half would bring.

The truth of the matter was that the second stanza of play brought very little of joy for either side. The home side came out the far more confident of the two, and Palace reverted to a kind of kick and hope style of play. It was Fraser who saved the day for us, pulling off brilliant saves to deny Pringle, Hunt and finally Kinsela before the referee blew the final whistle.

That Palace had managed to hang on, albeit simply to minimise the damage was a great credit to the side, and Steve will have drawn great heart from the display, and must be now looking forward to the match against Walsall on Tuesday.

Let's hope that our good home form continues, and we pick up a few more points in our endeavour to firstly make the season safe, and then perhaps we might be able to look forward to giving a few of the promotion candidates a bit of a scare.

One can only live in hope!

Colin Pryce

Charlton Athletic: Dean Kiely, Steve Brown, Richard Rufus, Eddie Youds, Chris Powell, Shaun Newton, Mark Kinsela, Keith Jones (Andy Todd 88), John Salako (John Robinson 79), Martin Pringle, Andy Hunt.

Substitutes not used: Sasa Ilic, Graham Stuart, Charlie MacDonald.

Crystal Palace: Fraser Digby, Jamie Smith, Fan Zhiyi (Jamie Hibburt 38), Andy Linighan, Terry Phelan, Jamie Fullarton (Nick Rizzo 69), Craig Foster (Andrew Frampton 75), Simon Rodger, Dean Austin, Wayne Carlisle, Andrew Martin.

Substitutes not used: David Woozley, Steve Mautone.

Attendance: 20,043

Referee: Mr A Wiley (Walsall).