The Guardian from London, Greater London, England • 36

The Guardian Wednesday May 27 1998 7 Monday's promotion play-offbetween Charlton and Sunderland was the best game played at Wembley in 30 years. Nick Varley reports Once more into The Valley PHOTOGRAPH: AP Before a strike leader in Gdansk, 1980 Leeds game, was so overwhelmed at Wembley on Monday that he can't even remember much of it: "It was the most emotionally draining game of football I've ever seen ten times worse than Leeds and that was bad enough. I've never experienced anything like it. One minute you were, to use the cliche, over the moon, the next you were totally down. Beforehand everyone was saying they'd be one goal in it.

But by the time Mcndonca got his third, I didn't even see it: I was just numb and I had my head in my hands. I don't even remember celebrating a couple of the goals because it was all just too much. The game is a complete blur and not because I was drunk." Neutrals too were overcome. The game of the season, according to some. The finest play-off match ever.

Or simply the best game for decades, as veteran pundit John Sadler wrote in the Sun: "Football matches don't come better than this. If there lias been one at Wembley these past 30 years, 1 was not thereto see it." genuine, fan backers and is now so admired as a model modern club that the Football Task Force was launched at The Valley. Next season the only problem at the ground will be a lack of space as the 35,000 who were at Wembley compete for 20,000 seats. Oh, and avoiding the relegation which marred the romantics' previous favourites, Barnsley, in their season in the sun. Which leaves the losers.

Ben Tegg left the scores of celebrating family members and friends to wander into the away end after the game and try to console some crying Wearsiders. "I just said 'Next It's about all you can say. But it must have been appalling. Losing 1-0 at Wembley to a lucky goal is bad enough, but after that Mcndonca, with his divided loyalties, was caught in the middle. Back in 1987, he was appearing front of crowds which struggled to reach the hundreds for Sheffield United's reserves.

I was among those who watched him. Next season I'm looking forward to seeing him action in the Premiership. I imagine he's looking forward to it too, secretly perhaps. But I guess he'll be among the less gutted of the Sunderland fans. After.

defeat in the national election of 1 995 photo: jockel finck must learn to collaborate. "In the age of computers," he says, "it is easier to collaborate" a classic Walesa non-sequitur. Should unions have the power to overturn a government? "No. It is not right. Squeeze the bosses as much as possible, I always told the unions, but never strangle them.

The unions have to exist but so do the bosses too." Walesa tells me there is so much left to achieve, so much left for him to achieve. He's counting on his fingers. "I would like to help build the United States of Europe. I would like it to be built on honest principles, and that's my wish for now. Then as one that has won the Nobel Peace Prize I'd like to do something for world peace and the third job I want to do is ecology.

There's a lot to be done in the international sphere. I've got enough work for the next 150 years and then I shall think, what's next to be done." omparisons will be made to England-Germany 'World Cup Final of 1966 or Bt captured all the elements that make football the greatest -game: relentless action, goals galore, a great script, treacherous divided loyalties and more than a few of the sort of raunchy embraces you rarely associate with football. It was ideal Bank Holiday entertainment. No, not My Summer With Des, but the promotion play-off final between Charlton Athletic and Sunderland. Such high-stakes games are often turgid affairs, but this one had everything: goal after goal as first Sunderland, then Charlton, played catch-up; what most thought would be the winner in extra time, only for yet another equaliser; and a penalty shoot-out, with a place in the Premiership worth about 10 million at stake, unresolved until the 14th effort.

At the centre of the tornado of a match stood Clivc Mcndonca, an ideal hero: scorer of the first Wembley play-off hat-trick; a hardworking yeoman of a centre-forward in the Alan Shearer mould; and a journeyman whose goals will mean he will finally play in the Premiership after more than a decade in the lower divisions. Except that, to use his own words, he was "gutted" by the result. In the aftermath of what was being described as the greatest game ever staged at Wembley, his sympathies were with the vanquished. His adopted home city. "I'm the biggest Sunderland fan in the world," he said.

"I love Sunderland. UI go up there with my family every summer and it's the first result I always look for. I played for Sunderland boys, so beating them is a funny feeling. But I'm also a professional footballer and I work for Charlton." The match reports also included descriptions of the death threats issued should he return to the city where he lived for 14 years from the age of two. Not that he will need such words to appreciate the despair of the defeat: he can just ask Michael Gray, the Sunderland player who missed the decisive penalty, who went to the same school as he did.

But, forgetting the feelings of Gray and Mcndonca for a moment, what a game. Charlton took the lead but then went behind 2-1, then 3-2 and 4-3 in extra time. For their fans it was nirvana. But revisited. Eleven years ago the side was involved in a similar heart-trembler in the first ever play-off finals.

Trailing Leeds 1-0 in extra time in a replay, they scored twice in the final eight minutes to maintain a place in the then First Division. Season ticket holder Ben Tegg, aged 26, who will never forget the fou can't help feeling a lit to the "Matthews" FA Cup Final of 1953 when Stanley created three goals in the last 20 minutes. Perhaps a game between teams battling for a place on the coat-tails of the best, and littered with more basic errors than Gazza's public relations, ought to take its place behind these classics of the game at its highest level. But given Charlton's history, it deserves to be right up there. From 1985 when fans were handed a leaflet which announced the club tle sorry for the simple man with such gothic During with the Queen at Windsor, 1991 photo: frank martin the vision work." If you crossed Chris Eubank with Forrest Gump you'd have someone approaching Lech Walesa.

Does it hurt him when critics suggest there was not enough freedom under his rule? "Nie, nie," he whinnies. "I always did my duties in the right way according to the possibilities. It was a very difficult time. I am blamed for a lot of things, but that means the system works. Stalin wouldn't accept enemies, he pulled their tongues out and he shot them.

All the time I tried to organise other parties, pluralism, not just the single party, then I would have become Lenin or Stalin. I accept the consequences, and if I lose today I will win tomorrow. And my revolution will win. However, their revolution lost, and that's why people do not tend their graves. To my grave they will bring flowers." Walesa wears abadge of the Virgin Mary on his lapel.

Has it replaced the Solidarity badge? "No, at the time of Solidarity I wore two badges, always Madonna as well." He says the new party will be based on the "honesty of religion" but it will not take the place of the church, it will not try to be the church. "It will work on the political principles of honesty and nothing else. That is why it will be called the Christian Which is very nice, though the "nothing else" is worrying. He stresses that he will be a backroom boy, that he will not stand for office and that the party is working from the bottom upwards. Is that because as president he worked from the top downwards and failed? I'm not sure whether he misunderstands the question or the answer is typically expansive.

"I was strong, I am still too strong. If I propose the new party too early I will just waste all the movement, everyone will try to join me and that would be bad for democracy." After Walesa was so overwhelmingly rejected by the voters last time round, it's difficult to believe you're hearing him correctly. Everyone will join him? "Yes, everyone will join me, my party, there will just be one party in existence." What roles have trade unions to play in his new society? After all, they were hardly prominent during his presidency. He says the unions are in crisis all over the world and they delusions of grandeur. He climbed a fence, had were to leave their ground, The Valley, after 66 years to share a home, an hour away, with fierce rivals Crystal Palace to 1992, the club were homeless.

Gates dropped to record post war lows for the First Division, finally greatness thrust upon him, was hailed as a great political leader. Lech Walesa is the real-life version of Chancy Gardener, the gardener-turned-president that Peter Sellars brilliantly played in Being There. After a while it became impossible for Walesa to knock on the door and tell his people, it's only me, Lech the electrician. Eventually, even when they told him that he was a foolish politician, he could or would not accept it. A few years ago Walesa went back to work as an electrician a normal worker except for two bodyguards and a trail of international media.

Reading about it, thousands of miles away, it seemed a humiliation. "Nie, says, his eyes light up for the first time. "I like it very much, that is the best time of my life. I was a good electrician." He reaches for the screwdriver inside his jacket. "I always have my little screwdriver in my jacket.

It comes in very useful at times. I often have to repair things at a conference." And you sense the President is desperate for something to go wrong with my tape recorder so he can prove how good an electrician he really is. becoming so pathetic that Tan-noy announcements of them were ended. The campaign to return to The Valley started with a petition and fanzine pressure and eventually encompassed putting up 60 candi dates in the local council elections. Divided loyalties Charlton's Cllve Mendonca Is a life-long Sunderland fan They polled more than 10 per cent.

Since then the club has built on its community base with the help of wealthy, but TOM JENKINS.