The Valley set to welcome fans back

Great news that 2,000 Addicks can be in attendance tomorrow night at The Valley. I had grave reservations that the 1,000 masked souls that left SE7 disappointed after the Donny match were going to be the last fans able to watch the players on in the flesh this season, so chuffed and very jealous of those that are able to cheer them on.

The club’s ticketing staff, most of whom were on recent furlough, are doing an admirable job of working out all the logistics including not only the ballot, but the timing of arrivals around public transport, and seating allocations plus working around the government restrictions brought in last week with the whole of Kent in tier 3.

The whole process has never been done before and we will be one of the first clubs (we did have a practice run, granted) to have fans back into the stadiums this week.

From what I can make out it will only be Charlton, Shrewsbury (who were also a previous test case), Cambridge and Carlisle that has fans inside tomorrow night. Arsenal will on Thursday.

48 of the league’s club are based in tier 3 so can’t have fans back at all, well at least until they re-address the tiered system in a fortnight.

Our game was pushed back 24 hours due to MK Dons’ cup game on Sunday, which was a result. In fact all of our games, subject to change of rules, up until Hull on January 2nd should have fans in attendance home and away.

Addicks’ supporters will be able to sit in the West Lower, Covered End Lower or East Stand for Wednesday’s game. Supporters will be assigned individual seats, socially distanced from other supporters in the stadium. Shouting and singing from behind a mask is not banned 😷 🎵.

Interesting that the club still manage to sell 4,861 season tickets despite the club’s future being in huge doubt.

Tomorrow I will join the iFollow band, where supposedly we are the most virtually followed club in League One, and have more viewers than the majority of Championship clubs as well. I don’t know how this is worked out, or if other club’s are not throwing fancy cars into the sales pitch!