Chapter 1: What were the key moments in the Pompey vs. Charlton match?
Pompey 2, Charlton 1. Pompey 2, Charlton 1. You know what I'm saying. You know, at 1-0, with like 30 seconds left of added time, you really are entitled to go, job done, have a look at the table, see where we are, maybe even take your eye off the ball. Oh, hang on, they've got a set piece. Ah. Ah. They didn't deserve that. They did not deserve to equalise and make it one all.
And somehow I felt I wanted to say that to the fans, the Charlton fans, who were, I understand why they were celebrating, but, you know, somewhere surely in the back of your mind, you're thinking, this is quite unjustified and quite undeserved. Because apart from the first 10 minutes, Pompey were sufficiently better than Charlton for 1-0 to Pompey to be a fair score. And then they equalised.
And we've run out, I think, of added time. But because there'd been some kind of a stoppage during added time, the ref, quite rightly, decided to let play start up again and wait for the next thing to happen, dead ball, throw in, whatever, before blowing up. Only the next thing that happened, the next dead ball thing, was that Min Hyuk Yang did what he did. And you know what?
You, dear Pompey fan you, you listening, you will be hard pushed to come up with a more exciting end of a game, whether it's an FA Cup game or a league game or a league cup game or whatever, involving our team, Pompey. I think, I'm not going to say ever, because I'm sure there have been similarly extraordinary turnaround events recently.
in games that maybe matter even more, although that Charlton game was pretty important, wasn't it? But, you know, off the top of my head, and I'm going to ask some of our old stagers who have photographic memories, such as Steve Bone, Mick Robertson, can you ever remember a finish like that? Sometimes we come out with this phrase, you know, only at Pompey.
There have been various things that have happened during my tenure as a Pompey fan, which goes back now several decades. And I say to whoever I'm having a drink with, only at Pompey. We'll finish. But let's go back. We were average for the first 10 minutes. Don't know why. They were pressing hard and high, maybe running themselves out of steam. Maybe that's part of the tactic. Let them press.
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Chapter 2: How did the last-minute equalizer impact the game's outcome?
Let them chase us all over the pitch and run themselves, you know, ragged, run dry on energy, you know. But they certainly had us in the first 10 minutes. And naturally, because we're human, we get a sense of foreboding that if the whole of the 95 minutes are going to be like this, then we're up against it. But we, I'm going to say, clawed our way back into it.
We didn't claw our way back into it. We simply grew. We grew. We became more authoritative. We were winning our 50-50s. We were holding onto the ball. We were putting movements together, passing movements together. Some of our players were starting to show some real bite and maturity. Blair does begin to look like a proper prospect, does he not?
Segacic looked a little bit, and so did Kirk, actually, look a little bit, I'm not going to say adolescent, but looking as though they've got some learning, toughening up to do, whatever, some understanding of just what a brutal, muscular world championship football is. But let me park it there for just a second. Think about it. If you've got a forward line that could have been
Murphy, Bishop and Lang. And for whatever reason, and we won't find out probably even tonight, I'm talking to you five minutes after the final whistle, we probably won't find out tonight exactly why Lang and Bishop were unable to play. Lang didn't even threaten to be in the squad. And Bishop was on the bench, but apparently after the warm-up,
spoke to the medical team and it was decided to withdraw him didn't know you could do this withdraw him and LaRue who presumably turned up with his kit knowing that he might be a substitute substitute Had to get dressed or maybe he was dressed already for the game just in case I don't know the depths to which they have to go to make sure that they're prepared and compliant with the rules and understand the rules and
in such circumstances, but you take out Murphy, Bishop and Lang and you substitute them with three perfectly competent, capable, imaginative, dynamic forwards such as Blair, Kirk and Segacic and what you do have to do is a bit of readjustment. They've got to adjust themselves to where they're playing and who they're playing with and the rest of the team the same.
So maybe that first 10 minutes in which we were a little bit pedestrian can be explained by that fact alone. But Segacic did his best, tried to get it on his left foot as often as he could, couldn't quite manage to do it, but always looked like he meant it. And that counts for a lot, in the championship especially.
Kirk began to look as though he meant it looked a little bit fish out of water early on with some of those long balls coming at him and he didn't get near them didn't get within six feet of them the first sort of 10 or 15 minutes but I noticed that halfway through the first half he won his first long clearance. He actually got his head on the ball and flipped it on.
There was nobody to flick it onto.
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Chapter 3: What strategies did Pompey employ to regain control after conceding?
But there's that moral triumph, isn't there, of going up against your centre half and flicking it on. You got there. You made the header. You won. You won that one. Blair is starting to look as though he knows how to unlock a defence. Am I right? Do you agree? I hope you do, because that means I'm right and you're right, and it also means that that's hope for the future, because he's just a boy.
The rest of the team, well, I thought Pac played like only Pac can. I mean, what a giant he is. And he's the first to point out that speed was never a part of his game. So the fact that he's not as fast as he used to be is no particular impairment or impediment, indeed, to what he does. He was magnificent. Matthews looked stylish on the ball, but it wasn't.
surprising that let's let's come on to that moment shall we because we we took the lead and it was of course because we had on the pitch
best header of the 22 out there and one of the best headers of the ball in the championship i don't know maybe one of the best head of the headers of the ball period at the moment in english football shortness he gets there first and he what he does with it when he gets his head on it is meaningful he doesn't just do glancing flicky things he goes bang Sorry, I nearly blew you away.
He goes bang and he does things with it. And didn't that remind you of the Barnsley goal if you were there? Do you remember that 89th minute winner against Barnsley, wasn't it? That meant that we were not only going up, but that we were the champions of League One. That was Shaughnessy, wasn't it? And he did it again.
So what I'm going to come back to for a moment is, has John Massino got his mojo back when it comes to magical substitutions? I think you could argue from today that he has. Because he brought Shaughnessy on and virtually with his first touch, he gave us the lead. And then as the game was petering out, hopefully a 1-0 win for us, he made some more substitutions.
We suddenly found ourselves 1-1, which was a kick in the guts, wasn't it? I mean, didn't you feel it in the pit of your stomach when that goal went in?
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Chapter 4: Who were the standout players in the match and why?
And then all of a sudden, another of his substitutions turns up and wins the game for us with a really sneaky bit of damn good attacking play, damn good goal scoring. You know, we used to call them sniffers, foxes in the box and all that sort of nonsense. But that's what Yang did. He got the ball. He wasn't entitled to the ball, but he got himself onto the ball. He scrabbled with it.
He jiggled with it. Suddenly, a shooting opportunity arose through various legs. The goalkeeper slightly unsighted. He got his strike on it. It wasn't a fantastic strike. It didn't bullet its way like a tracer bullet into the goal. It went in low and flat, low and flat. That's what good strikers do, low and flat and fast enough.
And the celebrations, he ran into the crowd, down by the bottom left of the Fratton End as you look out from the Fratton End. And 200, 300 Pompey fans came and joined him.
ecstasy the joy of being alive of being a football fan when your team go and do something like that and we see it on the television and we see it on youtube we see you know comebacks like that and we go oh that must be great well it is great because we just did one And we should be walking around with a spring in our step for days or well up until the next game.
But for days to come, because that was something very, very special. For the game to have ended with the score at one all and added time had run out. But the referee decided to allow one more, one last little throw of the dice for somebody because of some kind of bit of time wasting or stoppage during added time. It's what they do.
I don't know if it's written into the rule book, but their guidance is that if five minutes are added on,
for stoppages added time okay but during those five minutes somebody wastes a bit of time then you're allowed to add on another 30 seconds or whatever in order to make sure that the added time is fully meaningful right so i think that's what happened i don't know for sure because i was like everybody else i was sat glum with the score at one all those are two points that have been snatched
from the jaws of victory, snatched, stolen, by a team that didn't deserve it. They were all right. They had a six foot seven inch forward, didn't they? I thought we dealt with him quite well. Well, maybe he's not up to much, I don't know. But I thought we dealt with him pretty well.
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Chapter 5: What role did substitutions play in Pompey's victory?
I was astonished that at set pieces, corners and free kicks, which we were defending, the man who was designated every time to mark their six foot seven inch forward was Terry Devlin. I mean, Terry's, what is he? Is he 5'10", 5'11", at the most, I suppose.
He's giving away more than half a foot to this guy, but he did his best, and I don't think the guy actually managed to get any change out of him. Devlin held him, harried him lawfully, didn't get penalised for it, made his presence felt. Wasn't in the slightest bit intimidated. Of course he isn't. Wasn't, isn't, never would be. He's Terry Devlin.
He plays where he wants, he does what he wants, and he does it well. He does everything so well. Such an honest yeoman, and a quality footballer as well. Asset to any side. So he did a good job there, handling Mr Six Foot Seven Inch. And that was about the only threat that Charlton offered, really, was the height thing. They had various set pieces.
They had a sort of a long throw, not a Marlon Pack calibre long throw, but a long throw. And they aimed at him and he didn't actually manage to do anything with it.
So for the 18 minutes of the game, between the first 10 and the 90th, when the board that was malfunctioning, I don't know if you noticed, it wasn't working, the board that you're supposed to hold up for various things, substitutions and time added on and what have you, when that went up, saying five minutes,
which didn't seem a lot because there were quite a few stoppages in the second half, but anyway, I'm not complaining. When that went up and said, that's it, that's the 90 minutes up, you've got five more minutes to go, it seemed like all we had to do was defend. And we defended deep, and we defended with blood and guts, basically. We threw ourselves at everything.
We hoofed it long whenever we could, even though we didn't have anybody to hoof it to because we were all back behind the ball. And then there was that equalizer. And you just felt, oh, I'm going to be awful in the morning. I'm going to be not worth talking to for about 48 hours. And the ball goes down the other end. And what happened, happened. And we must make sure we enjoy the moment.
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Chapter 6: How did the fans react to the dramatic ending of the game?
We must make sure that we are as happy as we possibly can be. Until the next game, until the kick-off of the next game, we should be...
walking and whistling walking and whistling because it was a terrific result a great game of football because of how it ended up you know all's well that ends well and we are happy bunnies couldn't be happier wouldn't want to be in any of those coaches or trains taking Charlton fans home tonight
it's now just about two minutes past 10 and they're just at fratton station those that are taking the train back to london and those that are getting in their coach oh slumped in the seat they're flopping back in the seat and they're making this noise oh like that well uh we don't wish them ill uh they were a good crowd the charton lot they sang um
until we made it 1-0, and we got to sing Sing When You're Winning, You Only Sing When You're Winning, which was slightly inappropriate, but we sang it anyway. It was, all in all, one of the most exhilarating endgames we will ever be privileged to see at Fratton Park. And I'm not saying that men and grandfathers and grandmothers will regale their grandchildren with this game in 50 years' time.
But it'll keep a twinkle in our eye for the rest of the season, especially if those two points, rescued by fantastic substitutions... by John Massino, Shaughnessy and then Yang, mean that we are just four places higher in the table than we would have been if the score had stayed 1-1.
One evening, if you enjoyed it half as much as I did, then I enjoyed it twice as much as you, but I doubt that that's the case. So, I'll say it again, I'll say it loud. Pompey 2, Charlton 1. Take care. Talk soon.
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