The new Kent road

Outside Priestfield, they were reading about it again in the match programme. "There are strong moral, ethical and football issues at stake," Scally boomed in his column. "For every supporter induced into travelling 35 miles or more up to SE7 to watch Charlton, every Kent club suffers as a result."

His pay-off line was, "We won't forget"; such a veiled threat that one almost expected to see a bespectacled millionaire in a blue shirt and bovver boots manning a picket line at the depot.

Such had been Scally's rhetoric that one Charlton fan laughed he hadn't fancied walking into the pub in his red shirt because it might be "like a scene from a Western when the mysterious stranger walks into the bar".

He wouldn't have had to worry. Not many Gills fans seemed to care about Charlton's initiative, reminding you of the comments from Gillingham Independent Supporters Club chairman Mike Keskeys, who suggested Kent's only senior club should stop complaining and do more to attract fans countywide themselves.

"We are addressing the problem internally and will launch our own initiatives to attract and induce fans to Priestfield," Scally wrote in Saturday's programme.

If what I saw was anything to go by, he'd better get on with it because the scheme seemed a rare old success.

Take the tale of the first two customers aboard the Gillingham bus: 70-year-old Jim Phipps and his 14-year-old grandson Luke Hoban. Jim used to be a regular at The Valley but hadn't been there since the mid-sixties when he moved into the Medway towns and found it too much of a hassle to get to games.

Yet when he saw the newspaper ad about Charlton's plan, he bought a ticket for himself and Luke, who preferred Manchester United to Gillingham even though he'd been to Priestfield a few times "because my mate's dad carries the stretchers there and can get tickets". He'd never been to a Premiership game. "I just like any football," shrugged Luke, waiting to be impressed. And he was.

When I talked to his grandad a few hours later, Jim cooed: "Ooo, I know at my age I shouldn't get so enthusiastic but it was brilliant. Great organisation with the buses, smashing team, great game and only 35 quid for our tickets and travel."

He'd given Luke a picture of what it was like when he would stand behind Sam Bartram's goal and the kid was so enthralled by the 3-1 win over Birmingham that Jim conceded: "Charlton may have found a new fan." Which was the whole idea.

The scheme's organiser, Rick Everitt, said: "We've always found once you've got people there, it's quite easy to hook them on the atmosphere."

For the friendliness of Charlton has never just been an image.

Even the journey was a laugh, with Julie Meadows, the chairman of the "Medway Addicks" supporters club who looked after us on the bus, even teaching newcomers the Mull of Kintyre anthem: "Valley, Floyd Road, the mist rolling in from the Thames, my desire..."

There were all sorts on the buses, as Charlton's chief executive Peter Varney discovered with his own straw poll taken on the coach from Tonbridge. Everyone from season ticket holders taking advantage of cheap, easier travel to lapsed regulars who'd long been put off by more expensive train journeys to Charlton. This was where Scally had got it wrong, they reckoned: Charlton weren't poaching because Kent had always been their estate anyway.

One 71-year-old Ron Pittock got off the bus from Ashford clutching a Valley programme from 1949:

Charlton v Bolton with Nat Lofthouse playing for the opposition. He hadn't been back here for about 40 years.

Varney found such revelations quite "emotional" just as he was staggered to find 70 per cent of the customers were first-timers to The Valley. For the next home League match against Liverpool, Varney reported, The Valley Express numbers had nearly doubled to at least 1,300. Jim and young Luke will be among them.

"I don't think Luke's too bothered about United any more," chuckled Jim. Excellent. Only the worry for Scally could be that a Gillingham kid may also now be even less bothered about the Gills, too.