Charlton Memories: what’s in a nickname?

It was confusing being a young Charlton supporter in the early 1990s. By the time the ‘92/’93 season kicked off, I had seen my team play at “home” at three different grounds – Selhurst Park, Upton Park, and then finally, we hoped, The Valley. We had two managers: Steve Gritt and Alan Curbishley, but only three stands.

There were a few things I was sure about, though. You could smoke in the “Covered End” – the two old boys who used to sit next to me wearing their flat caps would regularly puff their way through a packet of woodbine over the ninety minutes. We were a community club, proud pioneers in the fight against racism. And last but not least, our nickname was the Addicks. When the players left the tunnel shortly before kick-off, we would shout ‘come on you Addicks!’ at the top of our voices. Yes, we were definitely the Addicks.

So imagine my confusion, as a young child, when I first started collecting football stickers and saw that we weren’t actually called the Addicks. Sometimes we were the Robins, at other times we were referred to as the Valiants. Television pundits and commentators for the old Endsleigh League Division One would also call us by these strange names. No one at the Valley ever shouted ‘come on you Robins’ or ‘Valiants’, so why did these so-called “experts”? Maybe they knew something I didn’t.

Luckily, by the time we reached the Premier League in 1998, most journalists seemed to have come round to the fact that we really were the Addicks. Our players might run onto the field to the sound of Billy Cotton’s Red, Red Robin, and our club badge might be a sword, but we are definitely not Robins or Valiants. It seems that the Valiants came about after a club competition to find a new name in the 60s. A bit naff, I hope you’ll agree.

Confident in the knowledge that we definitely were the Addicks, I began to ask questions. Like why were we called the Addicks? Something to do with the ‘Athletic’ part of our name, or a past scandal involving drugs perhaps? No one really had a definitive answer to my question.

The one theory that reoccurs most often, and therefore the one people seem to think is most plausible is that the name is down to a local fishmonger named Arthur Bryan. Mr Bryan not only helped the club financially in its early years, but would reward the players after a win with a fish supper – haddock, or ‘addock, as locals would say, and chips. Thus, Addicks is a derivative of ‘haddock’. Hopefully the players were only given small portions and they came with peas and a slice of lemon.

I wonder if there are any other clubs who are named after a type of fish…