Astounding cynicism from the away team and a thoroughly incompetent referee conspire to send the Tigers to their second home defeat of the League campaign.

The days of the Third and Fourth Divisions are behind us. The gruelling trudge round lower league hovels is no longer the lot of the Hull City supporter (Colchester excepted), instead we get to sample our football at top quality venues, watching top quality players turn out for the opposition side and the Tigers themselves. New chairman Paul Duffen is rightly ambitious and wanting to take the club to the next level, the holy grail on the North Bank of the Humber. One day, maybe soon, the Tigers will play in the Premiership.

On last night's evidence, you can keep it.

Danny Mills is the consummate professional. He is a tremendous footballer as well as an excellent winder-up of the opposition, a world class manipulator of referees and a general thorn in the side of the teams he lines up against. This we know, he proved it last night and I have no objection to that as such - in fact his crowning moment, when he hoofed a drop ball after a Charlton player feigned a heart attack and plopped it Dusty Hare style over the touchline no more than a yard from Myhill's goalline, was villainously hilarious. But when he is joined by 10 like minded individuals in the Charlton side, all intent on play-acting, bending the ear of an obviously gullible and inexperienced referee and generally - if I may be so bold - acting like a proper set of c"%*ts, it is a truly ugly spectacle. This is what "playing" at the highest level is all about. It's not "playing" with the football as much as it is "playing" with the margins of the laws and "playing" with the ability to influence the match officials to your advantage. It was truly a revolting spectacle.

I don't blame the referee really. Sure he was absolutely useless, he looks about 19 years old and evidently hadn't officiated a match quite like this before. On this evidence Charlton should be assigned only more experienced and savvy referees from now on because young shavers like Anthony Taylor clearly can't hack their gamesmanship. It was all so gallingly predictable. From the moment Taylor denied City an apparently good goal for the simple reason that Charlton keeper Nicky Weaver spilled a largely unchallenged cross and pretended to suffer a head injury, it was apparent where the game would go. "Referee made a rick there Scotto, bet he'll even it up in a minute", confided 80s fanzine hero Andy Medcalf seconds prior to the referee giving a free kick for the most innocuous challenge Dean Windass has ever faced in his glorious 18 year professional career. "There'll be a red card before half time", counselled Meds as the game came nicely to the boil following Charlton's award of a goal after a weak punch by Myhill that was quite possibly impeded by two on-rushing Addicks. About a minute later Ian Ashbee - the dozy cretin - went into ninja mode, launching into an airborne knee high tackle then wrestling his foe to the floor and rolling around on top of him in some kind of weird re-enactment of a teenage clinch in an Edwardian corn field. "Get ready for some world class timewasting in this half" said Andy as the referee pheeped the second stanza into action. That came true and all.

Grrrrr.

Myhill
Ricketts Turner Brown Dawson
Garcia Ashbee Marney Pedersen
Hughes Windass

With Okocha out with a poorly shoulder, Hughes was assigned the free role up front against his former club. He did alright. He was nothing like as good as JJ. And that seemed to be the theme that was prominent in the minds of the City players after the thrill of a decent opening 20 minutes subsided - "if only we had JJ playing we'd probably be in the lead by now .... ah well .... the ref's a bit useless .... let's just punt it upfield and hope for the best ...."

In those 20 minutes the Tigers made some decent chances as the referee allowed the more benign felonies to go unpunished in the name of flowing football. And it worked, until Charlton cottoned on and hatched their evil plan. Marney was played in by Garcia and saw his low 20 yard shot saved by fat-mascot-one-Saturday-inexplicably-turned-professional-goalie Nicky Weaver. Windass headed down a deep Ricketts cross into Pedersen's path, and Henrik's high loopy cross dropped towards Garcia before overtly robust defending waylaid the fey Aussie from his quest to head it goalwards. Possible penalty not given that - noted in Charlton's "I-Spy Book of How To Bend the Laws of Football". Pedersen found lots of space in the inside left channel after a poor Charlton clearance was returned by Dawson, but his half-shot and half-cross achieved 100% of neither. On 19 Charlton's ponderous passing in midfield broke down - the really very very average indeed Chinese international Zheng was a serial offender all night in this regard - and Garcia burst forward with the ball joined by two team-mates against three defenders. Good odds them - but when Windass laid the ball off for Hughes the bookies rubbed their hands in glee as the Scouse makeshift Nigerian spannered a shot way over.

On 22 it all went so right, but ended up so wrong. City pressurised Charlton down the right side of midfield and when the ball went back to Michael Turner he struck a luscious deep cross to the far post where Dean Windass lurked. Weaver back-pedalled and attempted a high take above his head but he got his angles wrong and simply palmed the ball to Deano's feet as the old fella bobbed about behind the keeper in a half-hearted attempt to challenge for the ball. I can't say that no contact was made - but I can say that any contact was extremely mild, did not constitute a foul and had no bearing on Weaver's mistake. I can be confident about that because the referee appeared to wave play-on, although perhaps on reflection he only did this in the hope that the nearest Charlton defender - who was 20 yards away - might effect a miracle clearance. Anyway, Deano crossed into the six yard box where an unmarked Hughes poked home - 1-0 surely. Err, no. Weaver had crumpled into a heap, tacitly accepting his error and trying to con the referee that he had suffered a head injury. Only after the goal was scored did the referee call on the Charlton trainer to administer to Weaver's needs, then he inexplicably chalked off the goal. Seconds later, after Weaver made a miracle recovery with the aid of a "the ref's disallowed it mate, game on" from the spongeman, the referee restarted with a Charlton free-kick. Worst refereeing. Ever.

This moment transformed a generally benign game of football, just above pre-season friendly levels of antagonism, into a full-on war. Windass lost his head completely, never to be fully regained and he played like an arse until he was subbed. Ashbee was quietly seething, looking to lunge and tug at every opportunity and failing to do the simple things deputed to his control. The likes of Garcia - and for a while and perhaps more understandably the ex-Addick Hughes - disappeared completely. A minute after the Weaver debacle Windass got his cheap free-kick as foretold by Gypsy Rose Medcalf, which he curled over the wall but not far enough from Weaver's right hand post to prevent him clawing it away for a corner. That corner, taken by Hughes, was flashed a foot over the bar by a towering Turner header.

But the die was cast. City's neat passing became ragged, Charlton nudged and chopped and tugged their opponents at every opportunity and the referee lost control at an alarming pace. By 37 Windass was running down the right channel and hitting a weak shot, then squaring up to Andy Reid for reasons unknown - it was as if Deano wafted a lazy boot at the shot to get rid of the ball so he could get on with the real business of bad-mouthing and shoving Charlton's captain. The tactics had worked, the evil plan had delivered the initiative to the away side. And all it needed now was a long free-kick from halfway lofted keep into Myhill's penalty box for the plan to reach its terrible denouement. Charlton attacked the ball in a spear formation, with two attackers packing down and charging at Myhill while a third advanced behind and went up for the header. Myhill did get a glove on the ball but in truth the onrushing attackers had clearly spooked young Boaz and in a situation where he should have gone into crazy goalkeeper mode and taken ball, man, other man, goalpost, defender, cow, elephant and Trabant all in one single-minded sinew-stretching surge towards the ball, he instead waved at it a bit and Luke Varney poked in the rebound for 1-0. I'm not sure whether Myhill was actually fouled or whether he was just intimidated. He was certainly "more fouled" than the untouched Weaver minutes earlier, who had got his free kick. Thus the City blood boiled a little more. And so two minutes later Ashbee launched his attack on Lloyd Sam, who had dwelt on the ball a second too long and felt the power of Ashbee's martial arts skills. Once the 20 man melee had subsided Sam was dismissed along with Ashbee. It wasn't hard to see what Ashbee had done, in fact he may conceivably have merited 3-4 red cards, whereas TV replays suggest that Sam's main transgression was putting his head into Ashbee's armpit and making the City captain squeeze down really tight so that it looked EXACTLY like a headlock. Cunning so-and-so, that one.

The match was now in melt-down. The referee deployed his random free kick generator to good effect. Bougherra claimed to be a victim of a head injury, then leapt to his feet and berated the referee when he (commendably, I suppose) refused to stop the game for such obvious play-acting. It was chaos. Charlton exploited it, erm, professionally.

Within two minutes of the restart Marney very evidently suffered a pull as he clattered Danny Mills with a late challenge that evidently righted a perceived wrong from some training ground disagreement of last season - from then on Marney hobbled around to only limited effect for a good 25 more minutes before Phil Brown replaced him with Livermore, who in any case was a natural replacement for either Marney or Hughes the second that Ashbee was dismissed. That particular bit of management confused me greatly, I have to say. Myhill flapped at another high Reid free kick and missed it, again in a situation where he should simply crash through any attackers in his way in a single minded quest to reach the ball, but this time the referee gave a free-kick. More blindingly obvious inconsistency I'm afraid. Then McPhee replaced the AWOL Garcia and the Tigers' forward play took a perceptible lift. I thought McPhee played really well against Chelsea the other week, and here again he was the only player to trouble the Charlton back 4 with his workrate, heading and tireless running. Stick with him on the bench, I'd say, he's better than Deano at this precise moment in time.

On 62 Zheng advanced with the ball unchallenged, and dwelt on it for what seemed an age as he waited for Mills to trundle forward from his full back berth to the edge of the box. The ball was rolled into Mills' path and the admirable ex-Tiger struck a fulminating rising shot that clipped the top of the crossbar with Myhill well beaten. On 66 Dawson had a shot very obviously blocked by a Charlton hand but the referee decreed that the offence had taken place on the edge of the "D", whereas from my vantage point it looked much much closer, or even inside, the penalty box. The resulting free kick was blocked and cleared after Hughes attempted - and failed miserably with - an overhead shot. On 70 Marney won a free kick on the right that was dispatched with pace and accuracy into the heart of the penalty box where McPhee met it with a glancing header that Weaver tipped away for a corner. Elliott came on for Marney and amusingly tried to kick and poke a range of Charlton players as they continued to collapse in a heap as a time-wasting ploy. He didn't do owt with the ball, mind.

Mills tripped McPhee on the left edge of the penalty box on 81 - again it looked as though the actual foul may have been inside the box - and Hughes attempted a ludicrously ambitious shot from a narrow angle that was easily cleared. By now Turner had pushed forward to an auxiliary striker role and this left big holes in City's defence that were exploited on 88 when Zheng advanced to the edge of City's area, drew the two defenders towards him then rolled the ball into the path of the unmarked Iwelumo - who throughout the night's proceedings had looked every inch of the non-league carthorse he is - and the lanky Scotsman tapped past Myhill's hopelessly exposed dive for 0-2. A load of self-important tossers went home instantly and deservedly missed City's goal.

On 90 Hughes had a low shot saved well by Weaver and Elliott had a left foot shot tipped over after strong work by Pedersen, now playing in the centre forward crash-bang-wallop role. Charlton made three substitutions in the five minutes of injury time and feigned at least 3 injuries that I can remember, which extended the time added to 8 or 9 minutes in total. Two minutes into these extras Hughes was fed by Ricketts down the right channel and his low cross was flicked adeptly past Weaver by McPhee to claw one goal back. And the equaliser nearly came in the 98th minute when a deep cross found Livermore surging into the six yard box with only the keeper to beat, but he scuffed his shot, fluffed his lines and the Charlton actors scurried back to their dressing rooms with the three points undeservedly tucked into their grease paint holdalls.

Quite a game. Quite an exciting game. Quite a demoralising game. Quite a horrible game. City can't play two good games consecutively at the moment, that's got to be a worry. Charlton's cynical approach to the game is the real concern though - they're a right bunch of you-know-whats.

HULL CITY (4-4-2): Myhill; Ricketts, Turner, Brown, Dawson; Garcia, Ashbee, Marney, Pedersen; Hughes, Windass.  Subs: McPhee (for Garcia, 56), Elliott (for Windass, 68), Livermore (for Marney, 73), Delaney, Duke.

Goals: McPhee 90

Booked: Marney, Windass

Sent Off: Ashbee

CHARLTON ATHLETIC: Weaver, Mills, Fortune, Bougherra, Powell, Reid, Zheng, Semedo, Sam, Varney, Iwelumo.  Subs: Sodje (for Zheng, 90), Thomas, (for Varney, 90), McLeod (for Semedo, 90), Todorov, Randolph.

Goals: Varney 41; Iwelumo 89

Booked: Bougherra

Sent Off: Sam

REFEREE:  A Taylor

ATTENDANCE: 15,001