BY RICK EVERITT
Kevin Nolan appreciated to joke that since his first Charlton match had been the victorious 1947 FA Cup ultimate, his profession as a supporter had all the time been going downhill.
That turned out to be more true than he may have imagined during the last decade. However Kevin, who died on the age of 87 on Friday, continued to entertain and inform fellow travellers along with his authentic wit and vibrant perception to the very finish of his life.
From 1986 onwards he contributed greater than 1,000 Addicks match reviews to the SE London Mercury, and latterly the South London Press. When these print alternatives declined, he popped up frequently on native information web sites as an alternative.
For a few years he additionally contributed a weekly column to the Mercury about one other of his passions, the native boxing scene. It was known as Impartial Nook – considerably satirically as a result of Kevin was something however impartial. Certainly, he was opinionated in particular person and on the web page, in addition to typically very humorous, however he was by no means gratuitously merciless.
The Mercury of the late Eighties wanted to publish an fascinating First Division match report 5 days after a sport which had already been extensively coated within the nationwide press. Kevin’s imaginative and infrequently irreverent fashion did that job completely, nevertheless it puzzled a era of footballers who have been accustomed to a way more purposeful method.
Their bemusement was compounded by the truth that Kevin normally solely wrote up what he had seen on the pitch reasonably than the post-match pleasantries within the press room, or organized to interview them elsewhere, so to them he was working within the shadows.
Equally, his unwillingness or incapacity to suppress his partisanship may lead him into hassle at provincial grounds the place shows of emotion within the media space have been typically frowned upon, though he loved his position an excessive amount of to place it at any critical threat.
It was by no means all in regards to the charges he was paid, both, which was in all probability simply as properly. However he actually appreciated not having to pay for his ticket, a lot as he had taken satisfaction from bunking over stadium partitions in his youthful days.
One in all his favorite yarns associated to clambering illegally into Bolton Wanderers’ Burnden Park in December 1981, solely to search out himself and his companions remoted on an away terrace that had been closed due to heavy snowfall.
His mammoth reporting profession started 4 seasons later within the inauspicious circumstances of a defeat at Shrewsbury City’s previous Homosexual Meadow floor within the April of supervisor Lennie Lawrence miraculous promotion yr.
“Occasions bordered on farce a minute later when Hackett handed 4 defenders, guardsman appropriate and completely in line just like the again 4 of a table-football crew,” he wrote. “They headed in the wrong way, arms aloft in frantic enchantment for offside, however the essential arm of linesman Mr Joyce stayed resolutely – and fairly appropriately – by his aspect, whereas Hackett ran on to beat Lange from shut vary.
“Division One, in that Keystone Cops second, appeared as distant because it has been since that fateful 4-3 loss on the ultimate day of the 1957-58 season!’
Eight months shy of his fiftieth birthday, albeit nonetheless an energetic novice participant himself, Kevin had no journalistic background. However he knew the sport and had an important present for telling tales. He ran Marvels Lane Boys’ Membership for 20 years.
The important thing to his freelance project was his dwelling and away dedication to Charlton and his friendship with Mercury sports activities editor Peter Cordwell, to whom I additionally owed my very own recruitment to cowl the opposite components of the Charlton journey from 1989.
The Mercury was all the time far more than an bystander in these turbulent years, with the Valley deserted and the membership staging dwelling video games at Crystal Palace’s Selhurst Park. Kevin was by no means an activist, however his ardour was all the time persuasive.
He may wax lyrical on the ache that Charlton had precipitated him and reacted badly to defeats, however his 4 many years within the press field have been in no way all distress. There were12 top-flight seasons, 5 promotion campaigns, three Wembley appearances and the return to The Valley in 1992. He relished all of them and his vivid commentary enhanced our personal pleasure.
Like many people, nonetheless, he was in all probability most comfy recounting his younger exploits. His tales of Charlton’s post-war First Division days have been instructed in occasional articles for my fanzine Voice of The Valley and others.
Even not too long ago he was serving to former tv commentator Martin Tyler put collectively a function on the 7-6 comeback win over Huddersfield City from December 1957. His private recollection, although, as shared in VOTV in 1990, centered sometimes on his failure to impress the complete drama of occasions on a girlfriend he met up with after the sport.
This proud Irishman, who nonetheless was as a lot of a Londoner as any of us, had mercifully missed the Addicks’ 1956/57 top-flight relegation season whereas doing Nationwide Service. There was one other, longer hole in his attendance a decade a later after he moved to California. However the name of dwelling remained. Quickly sufficient he was again in Grove Park.
Household was one factor that mattered extra to him than soccer, though they weren’t unique. His son Steve’s ABA flyweight championship win in 1983 resulted in an invitation for father and son to look at a sport from the Valley administrators’ field, which was solely marginally much less pure territory for Kevin than a spot within the Chilly Blow Lane finish at Millwall.
He married Hazel within the Nineties and she or he turned a well-recognized determine in press packing containers alongside him – one other signal of his indifference to orthodoxy – in addition to an enormous private help.
I discovered him one other gig quickly after I joined the soccer membership workers in 1998, main excursions of the rebuilt floor. His information, enthusiasm and heat made him the right information and introduced him nearer to the membership he cherished, however which hadn’t all the time cherished him again.
A stroke after which the Covid pandemic couldn’t maintain him away. He had forsworn going up north, however he nonetheless couldn’t resist an evening sport at Morecambe. And there he was on the terraces at Forest Inexperienced Rovers for an additional night sport in February 2023 on the age of 86.
You wouldn’t put it previous him to have been watching over Saturday’s 4-0 win at Walsall both. It was a becoming tribute. We’ll simply by no means know what he may need written about it.
MAIN PICTURE: TOM MORRIS
