Lee Bowyer’s men beat Gaz Metan Mediaș 1-0 in the club's first pre-season game after the match was abandoned in the 49th minute.
A protest, after Charlton were awarded a penalty, resulted two red cards being shown to the Romanian side.
George Lapsile scored the only goal of the game in the 13th minute after he was slipped in with a delightful ball by Albie Morgan, before he rounded the keeper and tapped it in on the stretch into an open net.
The Addicks were awarded a second half penalty after Lyle Taylor was bundled over in the box which is where the disgraceful events of the opposition players, Valentin Cretu and Marius Constantin, laying their hands on referee, Raul Mateo, occurred.
Head coach, Edward Iordanescu, then decided to withdraw his players from the pitch before the penalty could be taken, resulting in the match to be abandoned.
Despite the opposition players leaving the field, Lyle Taylor was as hungry as ever for even more goals and decided to jokingly take the penalty and slot it past Ashley Maynard-Brewer.
When asked about the incident, Bowyer said “Yeah, it's disappointing. It’s never nice to see, you know. You've got the official trying to do their job and the players start pushing the ref, it’s never nice, so rightly so he stopped the game.
"The most important thing is for us we didn’t get any injuries. It would’ve been good if we got a game a bit longer but overall I’m happy really because we got a bit of a run around and we've come off with no injuries, so yeah I’m happy.”
Regardless of the early end to the game, Charlton saw two players making their debuts for the club. Chuks Aneke completed the first half successfully while Tom Lockyer came on for the second half.
Aneke came off at half time after a solid performance. “Yeah, he’s a powerful boy. I think you see him receive it on the half-turn in that first half and just drive away and hold people off, that was something that we liked when we were watching him and he’s only going to get better.”
Lockyer’s debut was brought to a premature end but Bowyer still noticed positive signs from the young Welsh defender. “Tom didn’t get as long as he wanted for him but his first touch was a very good one for me because it was something that I told him after training this morning, you got to be positive with that first touch and he took that on board straight away so he’s someone that listens and wants to learn."
Charlton travel to Welling United on the Saturday, July 13th in the club's next pre-season fixture.
Article by Jhangir Ali
