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Inside View with Charlton Athletic defender Matt Fry

Matt Fry
Matt Fry

Everyone hates postponed matches – but I’ve got more reason to dislike them than most at the moment.

My loan spell at Charlton runs out in the first week of January, so every match is vital for me. I want to play as much as I can while I’m here because I just don’t know what West Ham United will want to do, or what’s happening in the second half of the season.

So when the Hartlepool United match was postponed last weekend, my first thought was ‘well, that’s one less game for me’ because I might not be around when the game is rescheduled.

Anything could happen and first of all it depends on the gaffer. If he thinks I’ve done well, the decision is down to him and then West Ham if they want to keep me out on loan for the rest of the season.

On the other hand, given what’s happening at West Ham this season, a chance might come up there because they have been struggling at left-back a bit.

Against Sunderland recently, they played four centre-halves across the back four.

West Ham are my team and I’m a West Ham fan, so in an ideal world, I’ll be called back and will play every week in the Premier League but I’m enjoying my time at Charlton – it’s a lovely club.

I said right from the start when I first got the call from the manager that I was delighted to come.

It’s a massive club and shouldn’t be in League 1.

But the only way you can prove that is by gaining promotion and although we’re well placed at more or less the halfway stage, we have to go out there and do the business in the second half of the season.

I’ve certainly seen plenty of action recently and when Johnnie Jackson was named League 1 player of the month for November, I felt like I’d played my part.

Playing just behind Johnnie, we’ve linked up well and perhaps it’s because he knows he can trust me defensively that he’s been able to get forward to such great effect and score so many goals.

One consequence of the postponement of the Hartlepool match is that we’ve had longer to dwell on our defeat in the Johnstone’s Paint Trophy to Brentford.

It was disappointing to fall short like that, just one tie before a trip to Wembley but we need to remember what it felt like to miss out and ensure that we aren’t feeling like that again at the end of the league season.

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