Garry Nelson: 'A coin toss could have taken my career in a different direction - instead I had five wonderful years at Charlton Athletic'

Former striker on transfer from Brighton, playing in the first game back at The Valley and writing his first book while on the Addicks payroll

Heads or tails?

Garry Nelson scored 41 goals in 222 matches for Charlton Athletic - but a different outcome on a coin toss would have meant he ended up on the South Coast instead of south-east London.

Nelson signed for the Addicks in the summer of 1991 - a tribunal settling on a fee of £50,000 after he turned down a new deal at Brighton & Hove Albion.

The former striker, who turned 65 earlier this month, told South London Sport: Charlton Athletic Edition that he had been lined up to go to Harry Redknapp’s Bournemouth in the previous season, only for an Addicks player to scupper those plans.

Garry Nelson (left) and Steve Gatting (middle) sign for Charlton in 1991 with chairman Roger Alwen happy at the two additions/Picture: Tom Morris

“I went to meet Harry down in Bournemouth and I thought he was brilliant,” said Nelson. “It was just after the World Cup when his chairman had been involved in a car crash. Harry had been in that accident and he was still struggling, with no sense of taste or smell.

“I was up in Blackburn for a game, I was on the bench but didn’t get on. I said my goodbyes to the Brighton fans. The club told me to stay at home on Monday, because that was when the deal would go through.

“The phone didn’t go. I was thinking ‘what the hell is going on here?’. Then I put Teletext page 312 up - their news in brief section - and read that Bournemouth had signed Andy Jones from Charlton. Andy and I have joked about it quite a bit since - how he nicked my move. I saw Harry afterwards and he said: ‘I flicked the coin. No disrespect to Andy, but it landed on the wrong side’. He might just have said that to be polite.