Friday night home games

Seem to remember it was a two fold thing, firstly because gates were low at that time it was felt there might be some floating support that might come along on a Friday night that would go elsewhere in London on a Saturday.Secondley it was reported that the players much prefered playing under lights as the wide open spaces of The Valley were not so visable therefore there seemed a better atmosphere in the ground on night games.

Datewise think it was mid to late seventies.

Worked for me as I played on a Saturday at that time.

pretty certain we played Carlisle on a friday night - late Feb '76 or '77

We had a lot of Friday night games for the 2 seasons after we got promoted (1975) with Andy Nelson, probably about 7 or 8 a season, it wasn't all of them by any means. Some of them were real thrillers as well, there used to be a bit of atmosphere at the night games, particularly under the covered end. I think we went about 3 or 4 years without losing a night game at home, got a feeling that run ended in spectacular fashion, getting done 5-1 by Luton.

Swindon on Sky: Mendonca gor two of them - one a dodgy penalty and Keith Jones got a rare goal too. The crowd was above the average for the season despite being a Friday game and also being televised. Two weeks later, a Tuesday game was the lowest crowd of the season (4000 less). On that basis we'd still play on Fridays.

Tranmere the season before: Kinsella, Leaburn and a penalty. It wasn't Lisbie who scored it but he earned it. Again the crowd was slightly above average. In the previous game a certain Clive Mendonca scored against us and was instrumental in Richard Rufus getting sent off. Earlier that season I remember watching Mendonca playing for Grimsby at the Valley (he scored twice) and wishing we had a srtiker that good! Rufus was booked for fouling him then too!