Exclusive interview with Charlton Athletic play-off winner Darren Pratley – still going strong at Leyton Orient

BY RICHARD CAWLEY
richard@slpmedia.co.uk

Darren Pratley has just finished a session in the cryotherapy chamber when we catch up on the phone this week. The former Charlton Athletic midfielder turns 40 in April – so it is clear that his regime works.

He made his debut for Fulham in September 2003 and is in his 22nd season as a professional footballer.

Pratley is not ruling out extending that sequence beyond May, although he concedes that it is only likely to happen if Leyton Orient offer him an extension.

The midfielder won the League One play-offs with Charlton in 2019 and spent another two campaigns on their books before being released by then manager Nigel Adkins.

But that was not the end of the road for Pratley, who lifted the League Two title with the O’s in 2023.

He has four promotions on his football CV with the chance of a fifth. The east Londoners are smack bang in the play-off chase. Charlton, themselves coveting that top-six League One spot, head to Brisbane Road tomorrow.

So what is the secret to Pratley’s longevity?

“The recovery side does help – so I do the ice baths and cryo chamber,” he told the South London Press. “I make sure I stretch and use the Normetic Compression for my legs.

“I’ve still got the enthusiasm to compete. I still train every day and I don’t have any time off. As soon as that goes and I start finding it hard in training or need to miss a day, then it is when I’ll start worrying.

“Obviously you lose a little bit of pace when you get older – but I was never that quick anyway. I still keep up with the lads.

“Even when I joined Charlton they say: ‘You’re over 30, you’re not going to play as much’ and all that stuff – but I’ve always managed to play enough games.

“Earlier on this season they were saying about going into coaching, because I want to do that afterwards, and I wasn’t really in the Orient team or the squad. But since October-November I have been in the team, doing alright and we’ve been winning. So then I think ‘maybe I can do another year’.

“It is up to the club as well because at 40 years of age, I don’t think I’d want to go to another club – start all over again, try to get an affiliation with the fans and as soon as something goes wrong it’s ‘oh, we’re signing a 40-year-old’.

“It will be down to the club and myself at the end of the day.”

Pratley still keeps an eye on all of his former clubs.

Charlton’s results come into sharper focus because, like Orient, they have been on a strong run which has pushed them into the promotion picture.

“At the moment it seems like Nathan Jones is doing a great job,” said Pratley, who played 111 matches for the Addicks. “The main thing for them now, looking from the outside, is that it seems like the fans are with them.

“When the fans are with them, it is a powerful club. When it does turn sour, and they turn on you, then it can be a hard place to play. It looks like everyone is together and I don’t see why they shouldn’t be in and around it at the end of the season.

“It is tight up there. At this stage of the season then no matter how you try to water it down, whether it is Charlton or other teams around you, if you take points off each other then you get to move up places or get yourself further away from the team that is chasing.

“Going into the last 10 to eight games if you’re around it – you want to be in striking distance – then you have got a really good chance. You want to be as close to the pack as you can.

“It is a massive game. If you win or lose then you’re not out of it. But winning does make it a lot better because it can have a massive bearing on the final run of matches.”

Pratley has been part of three teams that have got across the finish line in England’s third tier – Swansea, Bolton and Charlton.

Without his extra-time goal in the second leg of the play-off semi-final at home to Doncaster in May 2019, Lee Bowyer’s Addicks would have been knocked out.

That took the tie to a penalty shootout which Charlton won and then they defeated Sunderland at Wembley.

“The way we did it was special,” said Pratley, who signed after being released by Bolton in July 2018.

“Lee Bowyer told us at the start of that season we were going to get promoted and there were only 15 players in the squad. I don’t think anyone believed it at that time.

“He brought in some good players – Josh Cullen and Krystian Bielik – and we just hit form. When you get that momentum you don’t think you are going to lose games.

“The fans were with us on that journey – helped by the connection that Lee Bowyer and Johnnie Jackson both had.

“Going into the play-offs, I didn’t think we would lose. We played very well in the first leg at Doncaster to win that game.

“Even going behind at Wembley, I still had the belief we would get promoted.

“Pat Bauer scored with the last kick of the game at Wembley. It is right up there as one of my best promotions.

“I loved Bowyer. Honest. If you weren’t playing he would come and tell you. We would hide in the corridors sometimes because we said he’d come around with a gun and shoot you!

“One of the good things about him was that he used to coach us. Even though I was an experienced player he would help and tell me what I was doing right or wrong. Sometimes coaches or managers think that experienced players know it all when they don’t – they want to be coached just as much as the young lads.

“The way he worked with the young midfielders – like Joe Aribo – was massive. Along with Johnnie Jackson as well, I must say. He was a good coach.

“They are Charlton legends who played for the club. They were good cop and bad cop, if you like. I don’t think Bow could hide his emotions – if he was or wasn’t happy then you could tell.”

When he left the South Londoners in 2021, Pratley told our paper his exit came as a shock. Not least because he had played 39 league matches that season.

“I didn’t go into the meeting in a bullet-proof vest thinking I was going to get shot – but I did,” was a quote from him at that time.

There were far stronger candidates, who had served the club nowhere near as well, who avoided culls due to being under contract and nobody being interested in signing them.

“When I sat down with the manager at the time he asked me what I wanted to do,” said Pratley. “So when the manager asks you that then obviously I wanted to stay.

“He let me speak and then said: ‘Ah, there is no contract there’. After being there for three years – and the contribution I’d made – to be told I was being released was a bit gutting.

“Ben Watson was under contract and in the same position – similar sort of age. That may have played a part.

“These things happen in football.

“Nigel Adkins wasn’t really my manager, to be honest. Lee Bowyer and Steve Gallen were the ones who brought me to the club.

“I spoke to them after I left and if they had stayed they said they would’ve kept me on.

“Nigel Adkins made his decision and he didn’t last too long after me. I didn’t want to leave and I enjoyed my time there.

“I must say that I’ve had a great time at Leyton Orient. I believe everything happens for a reason. It has worked out well.

“I’ve enjoyed it. I always wanted to stay in London. I didn’t want to move.

“If I had got another year at Charlton then I would’ve taken it but, at the same time, I probably would’ve been retired two or three years ago because I don’t think they would’ve given me another year after that.”

Pratley has kept in touch with Charlton staff, including head of coaching Rhys Williams.

“I spoke to him a couple of years ago and he said when you retire we would love to have you around,” explained Pratley.

The only players that are still at the club since he left are goalkeeper Ashley Maynard-Brewer and Chuks Aneke, who did quit for Birmingham City but
is now back on their payroll.

“It’s crazy – it’s been a massive turnover,” said Pratley.

“They brought in younger players to replace me – Sean Clare, who I’m playing with now, and George Dobson, who is at Wrexham.

“Even the staff – Josh Hornby, the fitness coach left, and the manager. I think the only people in the first-team that I know are Adam Coe, the physio, and Tracey Leaburn, the player liaison.”

Pratley wanted Charlton to regain Championship status despite the manner of his exit.

But now with the top-two looking out of reach, the Addicks going up this time around would be at the expense of Orient.

“Obviously I want to get promoted myself but I still want Charlton to do well,” said Pratley.

“There are lots of good people there behind the scenes. It is a great club and it shouldn’t be in League One.

“You look at Bolton, Birmingham and Charlton – they should be up there with the fanbases they have got, the stadiums and the finances.

“If it affects Leyton Orient then I want my own team to do well – if it is us or them then I want it to be us.

“If not I want Charlton to do well because I enjoyed my time there.”

Prior to Saturday’s 2-1 loss to Bolton, Orient had won 12 and drawn two of their previous 15 in the league.

Pratley said: “We have been playing good football.When you get on that roll – that momentum – you just keep on going.

“Us, Charlton and Bolton have all been in good form. As soon as we win one you go ‘bloody hell – they’ve won one as well’.

“We have had a settled team and that matters. The spine of the side – back four, central midfield and centre-forward.”

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