Wanted...3 Men and a Lotta Ladies

Osei Sankofa, Amady Faye, Cory Gibbs. These three men are out there somewhere. The question is - Has anybody seen them? These are wanted men. Seems their Mums' have been cooking their meals every evening and they just haven't showed up, and their Dads's have been out and about searching their old haunts but without success. And now everyones getting a little bit worried about their well-being.

Times are such that the boy Osei was spotted early in August doing some advertising of a ball by running on a treadmill and on August 3rd a brief mention by Pards. "I'm hoping on Friday that Marcus Bent, Chris Dickson and maybe Osei Sankofa and Lloyd Sam will train. These guys are important players for us and we haven't seen a lot of them during pre-season.” No, we haven't seen a lot of them either.

As for Senegal international, Amady Faye, after being missing for 4 months, he was seen on August 1st at Aldershot walking off down the tunnel after yet another substitution on 78 minutes. He did get a short mention in the match report; "A rapid fire break from the visitors right on half time saw Walker held up with Faye sprinting down the right and the whistle for the interval sounded seconds later." And this was followed by playing the entire game, at centre-back, in the Reserves 2-1 defeat at Bromley on August 7th.

As for our the American left-back, Cory was noticed by someone in the crowd at Welling "Cory Gibbs and Dickson replaced Powell and Thomas at the break" but there was no further mention of whether he played well or not. There was further news back on July 10th when discussing the Spain trip, "Also in the squad is expected to be US international Cory Gibbs, who played just 45 minutes for the reserves last season due to a knee injury."

There's no reward, but we ask that if anyone out there can give us some further information on the welfare of three of our lost heroes, we'd all be able to sleep at night and their Mums' can save on the washing-up.

Meanwhile it seems that the Ladies, God Bless 'em, have been saved. After two months of hard work the necessary sponsorship has been found and we'll have at least one team in the Premier next season. Shame then that most of the players, tried of waiting, seem to have done a bunk.

Ann-Marie Heatherson Leanne Reidy, Leah Jones, Claire Tapp & Zoe Dolton have already departed for Fulham and England internationals Casey Stoney and Eniola Aluko have moved to Chelsea.

The saga started on June 26th when it was stated on the official site,"In 2006/07, when the Addicks finished third in the top flight and were runners-up to quadruple winners Arsenal in the FA Cup final, the budget for the women's set-up was £306,000." and Varney had the following to add "After very careful consideration we decided we could no longer operate to that level. We examined the potential for continuing to operate to a lower cost base, but the minimum the whole operation could be run on was £100,000 and there was no certainty surrounding this figure. We also looked at absorbing aspects of the women's section into the Charlton Athletic Community Trust, but this proved impossible to achieve.”

There's no details on what the budget is for this year only that "We concluded negotiations with the GMB union and Centre Circle Management Limited this week to provide the finance necessary to re-establish the women's first team." and that the management of the team will be handled by the Charlton Athletic Community Trust.

The whole sorry affair has not been handled very well by anyone and it seems there's no return for manager Keith Boanas after his criticism of the club in the media back in June. But the good news is its time to give our old favorite and community coach -whatever that is - a real job as Paul Mortimer's going to take over as coach.

"Training will commence next Tuesday, August 28th at 8pm at Sparrows Lane." - perhaps we'll see Osei Sankofa, Amady Faye and Cory Gibbs turn up.