Sponsors Event 24 March - CARD call for pickets at Sparrows Lane and Valley

Numerous Charlton sponsors and partners will visit the club’s training ground and stadium on Thursday – and the Coalition Against Roland Duchatelet (CARD) will be there to welcome them with a little surprise...

What’s more, we’re asking supporters to join us at Sparrows Lane and The Valley to make clear to sponsors, if any doubt still existed, the damage that would be done to their brand by associating themselves with Charlton.

Thursday’s club event for sponsors has been organised to help convince existing partners – from major sponsors to executive box-holders - to renew their seasonal packages. The day includes a trip to the training ground in New Eltham before heading over to The Valley.

CARD activists will therefore be present at the entrance to the training ground, on Sparrows Lane SE9 2JR, from 9.30am to greet sponsors and club officials – and are keen for other fans to join a peaceful picket line that will even include one notable sponsor.

They will then make their way over to the SE7 stadium, perhaps even joining the same convoy of vehicles containing sponsors and the likes of chief executive Katrien Meire, chairman Richard Murray and co. Fans planning to attend The Valley should look to arrive for 12pm in order to be able to greet the sponsors and club officials.

“We want to convince sponsors that there is no good reason to risk the damage to their business that being associated with the current Charlton regime would bring,” said a CARD spokesperson.

“Just last week the owner released a statement that has been largely disowned by the rest of the club, prompted the resignation of the club’s head of communications just 46 days after she was appointed, and was ridiculed by the entire football world. That’s what sponsors linked with Charlton have to look forward to.”

With the sponsors event taking place during a weekday, CARD is by no means expecting large numbers to attend the planned protests. Which is why other plans have been put in place to get the message across.

CARD and fellow fans campaigning for Duchatelet to sell the club have already targeted drinks supplier COCO5 and the University of Greenwich with individual action, prompting COCO5 – “simply the best natural, coconut water-based rehydration drink developed by a team of professional sports medicine experts and sports nutritionists determined to invent a healthier additive free functional drink alternative for professional athletes and people of all ages!” – to announce that they wouldn’t contemplate a commercial deal with the current Charlton regime.

East-stand box-holders Data Techniques also recently joined the protests by first plastering their box with Pinocchio posters at a match and then, for the live-on-Sky game against Middlesbrough, attending in full Pinocchio costumes.

They received prominent exposure when they were pictured by the Sky cameras and now, in a ‘weird’ coincidence, Data Techniques were this week told they were no longer invited to the sponsors event.

"Once again, it seems the club just cannot accept any criticism of it," said contracts director Bob Jacobs. "Some might think we were being childish by dressing up as a cartoon character, but that's nothing compared to the childish behaviour of the club over the past two years or so.

"They call fans customers, but a key part of any business is listening to your customers, and they have singularly failed to do that. The club seems to believe it must control fans, when it would be much better served listening to what they have to say, even if it's critical, and then responding in an adult fashion. But that's impossible to imagine from the current regime."

He added: "I am going to go down there tomorrow anyway. They talk about customers and I am one. Why am I being excluded because I have a different opinion?"

Other sponsors - such as Axis Europe plc, which has a turnover of £135m - have already walked away from the club, as a recent article in Charlton fanzine Voice of The Valley illustrated.

“Some club partners, such as COCO5, have already understood how toxic the current regime is to the future of our great club,” added the spokesperson.

“Our planned protest on Thursday aims to ensure that all the club’s commercial partners get the message that an association with Charlton in its current guise can only harm the reputation of their business.”