South London Sport: Charlton Athletic Edition is regularly catching up with Peter Varney, the club’s former chief executive and a boyhood fan of the club, to get his tales and inside info from when he was in a key position of responsibility in SE7.
In this 11th instalment, Varney talks about working with Alan Curbishley, a legendary Addicks manager.
CURBS HAD AN UNBELIEVABLE WORK ETHIC AND HE SPENT THE CLUB’S MONEY LIKE IT WAS HIS OWN
Alan Curbishley had 729 matches as Charlton Athletic manager, initially he was appointed as joint-boss with Steve Gritt in July 1991 before taking sole charge in June 1995. He won two promotions from the second tier of English football - an epic 1998 play-off final at the old Wembley (that match was covered in a previous diary release in December 2025) and the First Division title in 2000.
Curbs had kind of marked my card that the club were going to approach me about a job offer. I knew Gritty really well because I was doing the fundraising for the Hayley Gritt Research Fund with the British Brain and Spine Foundation. I was going up to the training ground and that’s really when I first came into contact with Alan.
It was the start of a beautiful relationship, as they say.
Charlton parted company with Gritty and Curbs became the sole manager.
I joined the club, initially as managing director, in the autumn of 1997. There is a diary entry about that, which can be found here.
Curbs was based at the training ground and I usually worked out of The Valley. One of the things we agreed upon, in order to keep each other up to date with what was going on, is that we would have a call in the morning. I always used to ring my mate, John Hayes, at seven o’clock. Curbs would ring me at 7.30. It was like listening to a traffic correspondent on ITV! He’d give me an update about what was going on with the Canning Town Flyover and how the council were completely useless.
The above chart is Charlton managers since 1981/82 when it changed to three points per win - Jimmy Seed (1933-1956) had 729 matches at the helm with 311 wins and 156 draws
The call worked quite well because I’d tell him about the stuff going on off the pitch and it was a great way, when I look back, in terms of building a rapport with someone.
