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days. It clearly rankled him that players can earn £100,000 a week or more these days whereas he and his colleagues had a very modest salary indeed. Who can blame him? His dad continued to work in the foundry at Fords in Dagenham and Charlie couldn’t do much to help him. As a significant counterweight to this comparative lack of salary, he repeatedly emphasized the great relationship he and the other players had with the fans in the old days, travelling home together on the train from away games etc, something almost impossible these days. Several times he mentioned that there were too many foreign players in the English game and that it was detrimental to the national side, though he admitted that in his day he too was a foreigner. The physicality of the game in Charlie’s day came up again and again and somebody asked him how long he thought he’d last in today’s game without being red-carded.... I thought that too much was made of this really and it didn’t reflect Charlie’s all round skills on the ground and in the air. It was a much more rough and tumble game back then.
Charlie’s lost none of his intimidating defensive posture as during his session he happened to be standing in front of the Gents bog and although many of the audience must’ve been busting for a slash, nobody dared to venture across the intervening space and squeeze past him till he’d almost finished, when a couple of brave souls managed a joint attack. As soon as he’d finished there was a rush for that door.Afterwards there was a very nice buffet and a raffle. There were a surprising number of Millwall fans in the
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