June 14th, 2025, is a date I will remember forever as it was the day my award of an OBE for ‘Services to Sport’ was announced in the King’s Birthday Honours List. Another important date will be Wednesday 10th December as I now know that this is the day of my investiture, which will be taking place at Windsor Castle.
When my award was announced, I did a video interview with my Charlton Athletic FC colleague Tom Rubashow for the club website. In this interview Tom asked me how I will feel when I go to my investiture, and I said I will feel incredibly proud, but I will remember all the amazing people I have met throughout my long career who played a huge role in my life and who I owe so much to. As I said to Tom, there are far too many to mention in the interview, but I said I would try to acknowledge them all in writing.
So, if you will indulge me I will try now to mention as many people as possible who, at one stage or another, played such an important role in my career development and who therefore made it possible for me to look forward to going to Windsor on 10th December.
My journey started back in 1984 in my Midland Bank days when a gentleman called Peter Woods recognised my potential in PR and Marketing and recruited me to work in Business Development at the Bank’s Sidcup Area Office where I was given responsibility for the marketing and PR of 12 Bank branches. In this role I got to know key people at Charlton Athletic like Club Secretary Anne Payne as I used to invite the manager Lennie Lawrence and the players to support my Bank events and initiatives.
It’s Anne I probably owe the most to as it was her who recommended me to Chairman Roger Alwen and General Manager Arnie Warren when the club, at this time ground-sharing with Crystal Palace at Selhurst Park, were looking for a Commercial Manager. Life was tough for us at Selhurst, but I can honestly say that without Arnie’s mentorship I doubt I would have had any sort of longevity in the game. Despite the challenges, I was able to make an impact at Charlton with initiatives such as creating the club’s fundraising membership scheme ‘Valley Gold’ which now supports the Academy at Charlton and presenting football’s first ever one-club dedicated radio show ‘Charlton Chat’ with Clive Richardson (Clive R). My success at Charlton led to my being approached by The Football League’s Commercial Director, the late Trevor Phillips after a recommendation from The League’s Marketing Manager, Darren Venn, to become the Marketing Executive.
This was an iconic but difficult time to join The League as the first meetings of the First Division were taking place to split away and form The Premier League. When the Premier League started in August 1992 both Trevor and Darren left to join The Football Association and I found myself on my own in the commercial department for a few months except for the invaluable support of arguably the greatest referee the UK’s ever seen, the late Jack Taylor OBE. Jack who famously refereed the 1974 World Cup Final, was now retired and working as our sponsor liaison officer. Being able to call such a legendary figure in the game as Jack a friend, is something I am extremely proud of. At this time, The League needed a new sponsor, and this is when someone came into my life who became a very important mentor to me in sponsorship, the late Steve Herrick of CSS Stella. With Steve’s help we were able to attract Endsleigh Insurance as The League’s sponsors and Endsleigh went on to play a huge role in helping to stabilise The League in our new 72 club format. I was joined at The League by Graham Walker and we worked brilliantly together to negotiate Endsleigh’s successors as sponsors, the Nationwide Building Society and to attract a raft of other sponsors and partners, including Wilkinson Sword, Yokohama Tyres, Auto Windscreens and Honda.
After 8 years at The League, I wanted to get back to club football and I accepted an offer in the summer of 1998 from Swindon Town’s CEO, Steve Jones to join him at the club. It was a gamble that didn’t really pay off as I only stayed in Wiltshire for one season due to the club’s dire financial position but I thought the world of Swindon’s owner the late Sir Seton Wills who was always good to me and I can honestly say that I learned so much in that one season which proved invaluable when I later carried on my career in football, ironically back at Charlton.
I was out of the game for about 6 months after leaving Swindon, but I stayed involved with football doing projects such as hosting at the ‘Match of the Day Live’ exhibition at the Birmingham NEC and doing some projects for Jon Smith of First Artists on a consultancy basis.
I then got the call from a good friend and someone I’d known since my Selhurst Park days when he was ‘just a fan’, Peter Varney who was now the CEO at Charlton. Peter invited me to come back to Charlton in January 2000 to be his assistant at a time when the club were desperately trying to get back its Premier League status, having got relegated on the last day of the season in 1999. We achieved this by becoming Football League Champions. After a couple of years or so I was appointed as the Club’s Commercial Director by Peter, and we went on to achieve great success on and off the pitch. The excellent performances of the team under Alan Curbishley‘s astute management, gave us the platform to negotiate the biggest sponsorships in the Club’s history with the deals with all:sports and then with Spanish property giants, Llanera. I think it’s fair to say that I will never be able to fully repay Peter for what he did in giving me the opportunity to carry on my career in football, after it had stalled somewhat post-Swindon.
During this second spell at Charlton, I worked with some fantastic people such as the Club’s then Community Officer Jason Morgan MBE. Along with Peter and others such as Stuart Butler-Gallie and the late Nigel Capelin and with funding from the Sir Maurice Hatter Foundation, we established the Charlton Athletic Community Trust (CACT) and this, under Jason’s brilliant leadership as CEO, has gone on to become one of if not the, biggest and best community trusts in football and one I’m proud to be an ambassador of. During this period Jason and I launched a ground-breaking anti-knife crime programme called ‘Street Violence Ruins Lives’ and along with Mick Everett, Jason and I introduced women’s football to Charlton. Under the management of Keith Boanas we proudly won the Women’s FA Cup in 2005, the club’s Centenary Season.
Whilst at Charlton, in 2006 I was invited by the then Leader of Greenwich Council, Cllr Chris Roberts to become a founding trustee of Greenwich Starting Blocks Trust (GSB), which was established to identify and financially support talented young Greenwich-based athletes to help them to achieve their sporting dreams of representing Team GB in London 2012, when Greenwich was an Olympic Host Borough. I will never forget the huge sense of pride my fellow trustees and I had when we knew that our dream of having Greenwich Athletes at the London 2012 Olympics had become a reality, with the confirmation that we would have 5 of our athletes in the Olympics and Paralympics. Gemma Gibbons (Judo) and Zoe Smith (Weightlifting) were chosen to represent Team GB and Tosin Oke (Triple Jump) was selected to represent Nigeria, while in the Paralympics, Greenwich Starting Blocks athletes Andy Barrow (Wheelchair Rugby) and Susie Rodgers (Swimming) were chosen to represent Team GB.
You can therefore imagine our intense pride when Gemma won the Silver medal and gave us arguably, one of the most iconic images of London 2012 when, at the exact moment she knew she had won she looked upwards and mouthed ‘I love you Mum’.
This success was followed up four years later at the Rio 2016 Olympics when our own Starting Blocks athlete Daryll Neita won a bronze medal in the Team GB 4x100m Relay, while Susie Rodgers carried on where she left off In London by winning an amazing one Gold and two Bronze medals. Sadly, the Covid pandemic in 2020 saw the demise of GSB Trust but two people who I enjoyed working alongside and who played a huge role at GSB were my fellow trustees Peter Bundey of GLL and John Anderson of Berkeley Homes.
When Charlton suffered two relegations in three seasons to find itself in League One, I left to set up my own Sports Marketing operation with my first clients being – Charlton Athletic! In this role I liaised with Colin Jelfs, a former contact of mine from my Football League days, to negotiate Charlton’s sponsorship with the Kent Reliance Building Society and I worked with someone who became a great friend of mine when I met him doing a job swap BBC TV programme called ‘Turning the Tables’, the late Peter Jones, the former Director of Plymouth Argyle. At this time Peter was advising the British Amateur Boxing Association (BABA) in the build-up to London 2012, and he and BABA Chairman Derek Mapp invited me to join them at BABA as commercial consultant, a position I enjoyed for two years.
At this point I’d like to mention someone who I enjoyed working alongside for several years and who was tremendously supportive of me, Angela Middleton MBE. Angela ran a hugely successful apprenticeship training company called MiddletonMurray and we used my connections in football to enter into some successful sponsorships, including becoming a main sponsor of Ebbsfleet United.
Many more people played a part at this stage in career, most notably Dan Bream of BreamTeam who became my long-term associate in website design and creative graphics, working together on projects for, among others MiddletonMurray, WJ King and ITRM.
Then coming right up to date, I have Charlie Methven to thank for bringing me back to Charlton for the 3rd time in my career in the summer of 2023. Charlie, who I had known since his days involved with Oxford United, was part of the consortium who were taking over Charlton Athletic from it’s then owner Thomas Sandgaard and he invited me back as interim Commercial Manager. It meant my career had literally gone full circle since starting at Charlton back in 1988. After a very successful two years back at the club, a period that saw us beat Leyton Orient at Wembley in May, I recently stepped back from my full-time role to proudly take up a new position as Club Ambassador, something for which I must thank Chairman Gavin Carter, Finance Director Ed Warrick and their fellow board members Jim Rodwell and Paul Elliott CBE MBE.
Other people I must mention who have been tremendously supportive of me over the years and who helped me considerably in my career include Dave White of ITRM, my oldest friend from my Midland Bank days John Fuller, Sir Stuart Etherington of the Old Royal Naval College, the late Anthony Hawken, who sculpted the iconic Sam Bartram statue at The Valley, Professor Paul Palmer, and all the players I’ve worked with in my career and who always supported me, including three legends of Charlton Athletic, Keith Peacock, Bob Bolder and Colin Powell.
There are many more people – friends, family and colleagues – I could have mentioned who have supported me throughout my career but I gave myself an almost impossible task by starting this article in the first place so if I haven’t mentioned you, please do forgive me; but the final person who I must thank, who has supported me throughout all the good and the bad times in my life and who will be with me at Windsor Castle, is my wife and my best friend, Helen.
