We’re very sad to report that our Charlton Athletic match reporter, Kevin Nolan, has died at the age of 87.
Kevin spent much of his career as a youth worker, and came to writing later in life. He was best known for writing in the SE London Mercury, which in its day was the leading newspaper in Greenwich and Lewisham. He later wrote for the South London Press, Voice of the Valley, Greenwich.co.uk, The Charlton Champion and The Greenwich Wire.
Former Mercury editor and sports editor PETER CORDWELL pays tribute to his old friend.
Charlton Athletic FC is rightly proud of the one level of consistency achieved over the meatiest part of the last 40 years, the best match reports in the local press – mainly the Mercury – written by my footballing friend Kevin Nolan, who sadly died at his Grove Park home on Friday, November 29.
It was the day before Charlton’s 4-0 FA Cup win at Walsall, which means those particular match reports will contain all the relevant facts but lack the class of Kevin’s report.
That class, despite crass points made about balanced reporting, included Kevin wanting one team to win every time, his team, Charlton Athletic. Of course it never stopped him reporting a great shot or save by the opposition, or their superior performance in a well-earned victory.
He argued the tribal part of that approach in these pages two years ago: “I need time to process the loss, to be royally cheesed off about it. Enough already with the relentless quest for a bright side. There isn’t one and it’s a football fan’s right to be grumpy on the sullen, silent trudge homeward. If that’s not already guaranteed by Magna Carta, it should be.”
You would never read anything like that in the News Shopper, and that’s why Charlton fans chose the Nolan report in the Mercury as the one to read, the one to believe, the one to nod to, often resignedly.
Even when it said of Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink, a star signing of the Premier League era who failed to deliver: “He took the money but didn’t run.”
Kevin, who would have been 88 on January 1, passed away at 3.30 on Friday afternoon with his family with him, “surrounded by love, laughter and music”. He had spent two weeks in hospital after having his lower bowel removed.
He emailed from home, saying he would keep me posted. But the bad news had to come from someone else.
Typically, Kevin’s email to me was, in effect, another tribute to his wife, Hazel, just as it was spoken from his hospital bed some years ago after a stroke: “I don’t know what I’d do without her, Pete.”
As a youngish man, Kevin used his teaching diploma to become leader-in-charge at nearby Marvels Lane Boys’ Club, a job he loved for 24 years that suited him down to the ground with its emphasis on sport, mainly football and boxing.
His son, Steve, was a top amateur boxer, which led Kevin to making contacts at the Mercury and pretty soon to Neutral Corner, a weekly column which proved from day one that Kevin could write.
Roger Norman was a great editor in those days and – as well as taking on the National Front with a brilliant front-page attack on a local election day in the 1970s — was open to taking on outside talents from different fields. I remember him telling me that a hotshot young reporter couldn’t work on Saturdays because he ran the family fruit stall at Lewisham Market.
By then, Kevin was in the Mercury’s Deptford High Street family and when the slot came up to cover Charlton home and away, he was a natural. He said two years ago: “The Mercury changed my life and I never forgot that. Thanks…and thanks again.”
We became close friends. He was bright and knowledgeable. I was loud, as Rick Everitt, my successor as sports editor, put it.
We went to Dublin to see Bob Dylan; Basel to watch England (don’t ask about Niederbipp); local pubs for live music; Shooters Hill Road to play for his team, Lesann United; Lee High Road for chicken dhansaks.
Kevin was Irish and a rebel who “burned with the injustice” of the Easter rising of 1916. His parents followed the well-trodden path to England in the late 1920s and came to love the country.
Two or three good moves made his a full and loving life which, as the years follow on, will always be remembered as “Kev and Hazel”. And we won’t need Bob Dylan’s line about dirty-blonde hair to remind us.
The Greenwich Wire’s editor DARRYL CHAMBERLAIN adds: I grew up reading Kevin Nolan in the Mercury, and remember meeting him when he gave a guided tour of The Valley on an open day in 1999 when Millwall were playing in the EFL Trophy cup final at Wembley on an adjacent TV. When the Sky commentator referred to the Lions as “a family club”, Kevin exploded: “Family club? What, the bloody Kray family?”
I’d been running The Charlton Champion as a hyperlocal site for a few years, but apart from when it cropped up in news stories, I didn’t really touch matches because I was worried that they would crowd out everything else on the site. But I always thought it’d be great to host Kevin’s reports. After the promotion play-off success in 2019. I had a chat with Neil Clasper, the Champion‘s co-editor, and we decided to give it a go. After all, the club would go from success to success, wouldn’t it?
He’d already been writing for Greenwich.co.uk, so we settled on him doing the home matches for us, and to do the away matches for Greenwich.co.uk. When the Champion ended last year, Kevin said “I haven’t closed another paper, have I?”, but his audience grew at The Greenwich Wire.
Kevin was a joy to edit – because his reports, sometimes delivered in the small hours of the morning following midweek matches, hardly needed editing at all. And there was never a word wasted, even when skewering the egos of the latest hopeless owners.
He was still going to most away matches until a couple of years ago, when I ran into him at Forest Green Rovers, the tiny Gloucestershire club that had a brief spell in League One. He was brilliant company on the chilly terrace – turning down an offer of a seat in the stand – and you wouldn’t know that the match report he produced after came entirely from memory.
I’ll miss his reports and phone calls, and generations of Charlton fans will miss his pithy, funny reports that were always spot-on. Thanks Kev.
- Kevin Nolan’s last match report was the EFL Trophy match against Chelsea U21s for Greenwich.co.uk. The archive of his reports there goes back to 2011.
- His last report for The Greenwich Wire was against Wrexham last month – you can read all his reports in our archive. You can follow his home reports from 2019 to 2023 in The Charlton Champion archive.
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