Where on earth does Charlton Athletics Addicks nickname come from?
” asked James Fromer, posing the kind of question requiring little more than a quick trip to the club’s official website (bolstered by the Knowledge’s unofficial website). “The majority of Charlton historians agree the most likely explanation dates back to a fish and chip shop in 1908 and that ‘Addicks’ derived from ‘haddock’. At that time, Arthur Bryan was a local fishmonger who helped underwrite the cost of establishing Charlton at The Valley, and the club and its opposition used to dine on [his] fish suppers following matches. The story goes that if the team lost they would dine on the less popular cod, but a victory would secure a haddock supper.” It appears the club were even called “The Haddocks”, as first depicted in a Kentish Independent newspaper cartoon from October 1908, before becoming “The Addicks” by 1910 (although “The Haddicks” was also used), while a potentially fishy legend has it that the club’s 1909 Woolwich Cup win against Army Service Corps prompted Bryan to parad
